"The Self alone is real. The world of the senses is superimposed upon it."

- the Bhagavata Purana

... During the spiritual journey, man undergoes consecutive experiences of separation and union, or death and life. But each time he dies and is reborn, he moves closer to the ultimate station of subsistence and "I am God."

- The Sufi Path of Love: The Spiritual Teachings of Rumi (pp. 232-234)



"Something mysteriously formed,
Born before heaven and earth.
In the silence and the void,
Standing alone and unchanging,
Ever present and in motion.
Perhaps it is the mother of ten thousand things.
I do not know its name.
Call it Tao."

- LaoTzu

"Catharsis is a medical term derived from modern Latin, and is adopted from the Greek word katharsis which literally translated means a cleansing or purging. It is formed on the Greek word kathairein which is translated to cleanse or purge, and kathairein is formed on katharos, which means pure, or more literally utterly clean, spotless. The origins of katharos are in themselves obscure and uncertain, which is in character with the modern day usage of the word catharsis.

catharsis means: a purification of the emotions by vicarious experience. This definition is most often used when talking about drama, or the arts, with most authorities agreeing that the term was first introduced and used in this context by Aristotle to define the effects of tragedy on the audience in his work titled The Poetics.

If we look to some of the foremost thinkers of the past and their ideas on catharsis, we can see mirrored the concerns of each age or school of thought. As examples, Georg Hegel, a German idealist philosopher, was the first thinker to make catharsis a universal phenomenon through what is commonly referred to as the Hegelian Dialectic. This was Hegel's method of reasoning that begins with a thesis which moves to its opposite, the anti-thesis (by the principle of negativity), and these two opposing forces clash producing a new, higher level called synthesis which shares traits of both original concepts. When catharsis is explained in this manner, it takes on aspects of the function of art that eventually become akin to history, life, and the universe (Abdulla 4).

Another noted German philosopher, Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche, made a significant contribution to one of the variant meanings of catharsis in his first book titled The Birth Of Tragedy From The Spirit Of Man. In it he introduced his famous distinction between the Apollonian, or rational, element in human nature and the Dionysian, or passionate, element, as exemplified in the Greek gods Apollo and Dionysus (Wren). According to Nietzsche, tragedy is the product of a tension between these two energies that co-exist in the human mind; but it is only after the recognition of the Dionysian that the Appollonian can triumph producing a momentary harmony. This gives us a glimpse into Nietzsche's insights, and explains his emphasis on the role of emotions leading to some form of intellectual understanding or meaning after in-depth emotional involvement.

- Catharsis

"Heraclitus of Ephesus , "perhaps the greatest and boldest thinker among the pre-Socratics" (Popper, 1968) proposed the concepts of flux, strife, and Logos. Flux is the concept that everything is undergoing constant change (the becoming of Xenophanes). The everchanging river became an example maintained by history and again made prominant by William James (1890). Strife is a process of change whereby everything gives rise to its opposite. There is then a union of opposites, a new whole created by opposing forces, as in the archer's bow. Arche is motion as originator of everything. The seeds of dialectics can be seen here: thesis, antithesis, synthesis. "There is no proposition of Heraclitus which I have not adopted in my logic" (Hegel, (1812/1929). Logos is the orderly principles that govern change, of action and reaction, and Logos is reason, our ability to understand and behave reasonably. Understanding Logos required transcending appearances.

- Themes Common to Western Psychology & Chaos Theory Albert R. Gilgen & Frederick David Abraham

The Age of Gods

"Myth at the level of understanding of the Age of Heroes is symbolic or figurative, but the world is still divided. Level IV is the unitive state of the great mystics; it is a state of being, analogous to music, in which myth is not simply a description, but a performance of the very reality it seeks to describe. Here history becomes the performance of myth, for the experience of recalling (anamnesis) enlightens the individual to see that myth is the history of the soul. The ego is locked into a narrow time frame (Plato's cave), and so experiences from the other dimensions of the soul are recast into the forms and imagery of the ordinary world, but in the experience of illumination the ego realizes that the narratives that seem to be saying one thing are saying much more."

- The Four Levels of Meaning for Myth

"The job of the artist is always to deepen the mystery."

- Francis Bacon

"In other words, there are no package deals in the ongoing transformation of God by which each of us gives Him human manifestation. Typically, those who think so -- those who believe they have discovered the One path by which others can "also" become enlightened -- are either novices to the work, self-deluded or suffer from what Jung has called an "inflation of the Ego" caused by an archetypal possession. Such formulas, when they exist, are a sure hinderance to Self-Realization in those who broadcast them, and those who are foolish enough to listen. The Self, Jung insists, speaks to each of us of different things in different words and in different voices; the task, he says, is to listen and respond uniquely to our unique instructions."

Still on the Road.

- The Transformation of God, Jung Seminar by Yakov Leib

"The 2,500 year old war of Dualism, subject vs. object, observer vs. event, masculine vs. feminine --the war of the opposites is over according to the new priestly physicists as the vanguard of Quantum Mechanics. As Bertrand Russell summed it up succinctly.- "The world may be called physical or mental or both or neither as we please; in fact, the words serve no purpose." In short, quantum physics has taken another dualism that of mental vs. material, to the annihilating edge; and there it has vanished. Erwin Schroedinger, founder of quantum mechanics, put it bluntly: "Subject and object are only One. The barrier between them cannot be said to have broken down as a result of recent experience in the physical sciences, for this barrier does not exist." Werner Heisenberg's conclusion is clear: "From the very start, we are involved in the argument between nature and man in which science plays only a part, so that the common division of the world into subject and object, inner world and outer world, body and soul is no longer adequate and leads us into grave difficulties." Schroedinger heartily concurs and states simply: "These shortcomings can hardly be avoided except by abandoning dualism," "Abandoning dualism" is exactly what the new physics has done. Besides relinquishing the illusory division between subject and object, wave and particle, mind and body, spiritual and material, the new physics, with the brilliant help of Albert Einstein abandoned the dualism of space and time, energy and matter."

-Spectrum Of Consciousness
by Ken Wilbur

"People who are fertile on a spiritual and mental level will desire to procreate ‘in beautiful writing’ their children in the shape of insights (and any other form of virtue), which will give them immortal glory. All poets and creative artist fall within his category.

The most renowned and beautiful insights procreated in 'beautiful writing' take up the form of social arrangements, and are called wisdom and justice. Diotima tells that these spiritual children, who we driven by Eros procreate in the beautiful, possess a greater beauty and immortality than ‘physical children’ (209C). The poets reveal their insights in the beauty of their art. Homer and Hesiod have acquired immortal glory with their descendants in the form of literary works. The same has been said of Lycurgus and Solon who reveal their wise and just insights to posterity through their excellent laws. In short in Symposium Eros has been described as the guiding and creative impulse that drives and inspires poets, philosophers and other wise men to procreate and reveal their insights in their literal work.

An introduction into Plato's 'doctrine of Eros'
by Dr. T. J. Kuijl

> Considering that you were all of 26 when you initiated "The Great Work" and > that I am 42 and spend an inordinate amount of time considering the thoughts > of that 26 year old.... I find your teacher's statement to be strikingly > true.It seems to me that I generally feel the need to *give* advice to people in > their 20's and under. I can't think of any "20 somethings" I look to for > words of wisdom or otherwise - and yet there you are: an anomaly wrapped in > a riddle cloaked in a mystery. Hey you forgot .... "behind a throne...." see "Lend Your Love to Me Tonight." Plus Richard Gardener's beguiling remark, "You have a knowledge of the truth." > 11:02 > R Carlos Nakai/Nawang Khechog: 4th Movement: Heart from Winds of Devotion > R Carlos Nakai (Native American flute/chanting); > Nawang Khechog (flutes/chanting); > Peter Kater (synthesisers/backing vocals); > Geoffrey Gordon (percussion); > Chris White (vocals); > David Darling (cello); > Wade Matthews (bass) > album: R Carlos Nakai/Nawang Khechog - Winds of Devotion > CD: EarthSea Records ESC-1050 (Released 1998) > EarthSea Records, PO Box 1109, > Warrenton, VA 20188 USA, > e-mail info@earthsearecords.com, > visit http://www.earthsearecords.com Ahh this was the entrancing one... very superior 'no wage' music... What is presented within the chapters of Promenade the Puzzle > only serve to enhance the already considerable mystique of KC 69, strongly > confirming what we already knew: the early albums are enduring works of art > unlike anything produced in the field of popular music. The first four would > be an excellent subject for study in any Humanities and Fine Arts > curriculum. Maybe the site should be called "King Crimson: A Study Guide." How sad that > he cannot bring himself to involve even you in the album's re-release. You, > who named the child, gave it words to speak and a direction in life. > Without you, King Crimson would have never been. Fripp, Giles, Lake & > McDonald would have been an interesting and pleasant album, I'm sure, and, > had the group stayed together (highly unlikely), they would have quickly > spun off (as Fripp did when he lost you) in the direction of jazz-fusion or > Soft Machine-like meanderings. Without you, there would not have been much > of a legacy to speak of. Without you, there may not have been a > "progressive" genre. "The artist picks up the message of cultural and technological challenge decades before its transforming impact occurs. He then builds models or Noah's arks for facing the challenge at hand."

- Marshall McLuhan

"Whenever the collective unconscious becomes a living experience and is brought to bear upon the conscious outlook of an age, the event is a creative act which is of importance to everyone living in that age. A work of art is produced that contains what may truthfully be called a message to generations of men."

- Carl Gustav Jung
Modern Man In Search Of A Soul

"The impact of an archetype, whether it takes the form of immediate experience or is expressed through the spoken word, stirs us because it summons up a voice stronger than our own. Whoever speaks in primordial images speaks with a thousand voices; he enthralls and overpowers while at the same time he lifts the idea he is seeking to express, out of the occasional and the transitory to the realm of the ever-enduring. He transmutes our personal destiny into the destiny of mankind and evokes in us all those beneficent forces that ever and anon have enabled humanity to find a refuge from every peril and to outlive the longest night."

- C. G. Jung

"A poet makes himself a visionary through a long, boundless, and systematized disorganization of all the senses. All forms of love, of suffering, of madness; he searches himself, he exhausts within himself all poisons, and preserves their quintessence. Unspeakable torment, where he will need the greatest faith, a superhuman strength, where he becomes all men the great invalid, the great criminal, the great accursed - and the Supreme Scientist! For he attains the unknown! Because he has cultivated his soul, already rich, more than anyone! He attains the unknown, and if, demented, he finally loses the understanding of his visions, he will at least have seen them! So what if he is destroyed in his ecstatic flight through things unheard of, unnameable: other horrible workers will come; they will begin at the horizons where the first one has fallen!"

Arthur Rimbaud (May 15,1871)

Know then thyself, presume not God to scan;

The proper study of mankind is Man.

Plac’d on this isthmus of a middle state,

A being darkly wise, and rudely great:

With too much knowledge for the Sceptic side,

With too much weakness for the Stoic’s pride,

He hangs between; in doubt to act or rest;

In doubt to deem himself a God, or Beast;

In doubt his Mind or Body to prefer;

Born but to die, and reas’ning but to err;

Alike in ignorance, his reason such,

Whether he thinks too little, or too much:

Chaos of Thought and Passion, all confused;

Still by himself abused, or disabused;

Created half to rise, and half to fall;

Great lord of all things, yet a prey to all;

Sole judge of Truth, in endless Error hurled:

The glory, jest and riddle of the world!"

- Alexander Pope, ‘Essay on Man’ (1733)

"Still round the corner there may wait
A new road or a secret gate;
And though I oft have passed them by,
A day will come at last when I
Shall take the hidden paths that run
West of the Moon, East of the Sun."

- J.R.R. Tolkien, The Return of the King
] The Lord of the Rings (pt. III)




"The work of the poet comes to meet the spiritual need of the society in which he lives, and for this reason his work means more to him than his personal fate, whether he is aware of this or not."

~C.G. Jung, Modern Man In Search Of A Soul




Epilogue

"The carnival is done! Let life return
To normal. First and last a Fool we learn
To live by Nature, if the God within
Awakes and we become more genuine.
A Clever Fool, thy Godhead thou shalt earn!"