THE COMPASSIONATE ANARCHIST June, 2003 This is not a bible. Nor is this a text intended to be read often to the exclusion of crossing perspectives. In fact this is an antibible but I do not speak up against the spiritual attitude towards life, only against the confinement in a boring cage of concepts of the religious spirit. So without insult, please, and sincerely I mean no offense, please consider living from now on fully and entirely without a foundation in a book. You will find it so much more worth while. It's called compassionate anarchism, if you have to have a name for it. There are many names. Dozens. Or infinitely many. One another name I will propose right now: Life. The word "compassionate", just like the word "anarchism", deserves some initial explanation perhaps. "Compassion", not unlike "empathy", means to feel into how another is feeling life, and, unlike empathy, also have a passion to heal, help or alleviate suffering, if any. My own choice, and all of these utterances are, humbly felt, of course nothing but my own choices, is to assert: God is a dyad, a Male God and a Female God or Goddess, and together they enact compassion for all. They copulate and set the dance of cosmos. To them we shall pray. Then why bring in he word "anarchism"? Why not stick to "compassion"? Because we human beings have an unfortunate tendency to codify as mechanisms, more or less like computer programs, things which ought to be a process or allowed to be free, generally speaking. So, put shortly, we need remainders like saying, "let it be", "don't be a control-maniac", or, more concisely, "anarchism", which in its roots mean "non-control". Unlike political ideologies like communism or whatever, anarchism involves full liberty. Unlike dogmatists of socalled Christian and other stagnant, stale forms of beliefs, a compassionate anarchist asserts that dirty thoughts are from God whereas clean or sterile thoughts are a human, unhappy invention. In other words, compassionate anarchism endorse sex and masturbation. Compassionate anarchists are against such violence against the body as implied in, say, heroin, but bring in the ecstasy of sex in the recognition that all living beings deserve ecstasy every day. This is also encouraged through Yoga, Tantra, Meditation, Dance, Massage, Music, Vegetarianism, Painting, Writing etc. Now a healthy, lovely, gorgeous, sexual, beautiful, joyous style of living requires insight into the wholeness of life and the dangers of abusing anybody. Transferred into the bodily realm, the body distinguishes food from poison, air from bacteria, and so there are things like police in societies which protect the nonviolent creative unfoldment of individuals against such monsterous things as gangs. A noncompassionate anarchist is, for all I know, probably against even police. A compassionate anarchist is okaying some self-restrained, nonviolently oriented police but is totally against killing for patriotism or for any other reason. So a compassionate anarchist says no-no to military, mafia, etc. * * * So this is not a system. I do not have or claim adherence to any tradition or nontradition. I have no romantic idea about the letters a-n-a-r-c-h-i-s-m. I know of people who, idiotically enough, support not only Nietzsche's ideas and "anarchism", but Hitlerism as well. I know of people who, intoxicated with the hatred of their government, embrace both "anarchism" and the stagnant control-maniac thing called "communism". I am sure that every name can be misused and I am sure that the word "anarchism", like the word "love", has been used to justify the most grotesque of actions. So, in my own choice, the societal use of the word "anarchism" or, for that matter, any larger phrase containing it, like "compassionate anarchism", is of practically no interest. Only the clear-cut essence of its roots, as noncontrol. Just that. All the universe is based on effortlessness. Effort, like slavery, is a special case of the former. Sanity lies in asking, "is it more effortless to walk these miles or drive a car?" and similar examples. Truth is most effortless. Health is most effortless. So driving a car may be a quasi- or pretentious effortlessness, for walking may be far more free from resistance as the limbs are cleansed, rejuvenated, strengthened and all that. The human brain knows the rhythm of walking and enjoys it, clears itself up by it. So effortlessness is the principle of coherence or wholeness. I put these complex things in a simple language and do not expect agreement but that we can enquire. So the anarchist abhors all systems, denies the idea that leadership can be virtous, rejects the thought that a guru can be enlightened or that discipleship can be enlightening. It is about noncontrol, recognizing the strength of the UNCOMPUTER idea as basis of metaphysics. Sex, as you may have noticed, is good in its not being a routine nor a concept practised within the context of a regime of fetishism. It is good when it is both an extension of dance and simultaneously the foundation of dance. So the insight that sex is the essence of the creative shows that it is a decline of consciousness of humankind to regard cosmos as based on a male God or on neutral energy forces. Cosmos, at every level, in each instant, is the UNCOMPUTER of sexual creationship unfolding a stream of COMPUTERS or SLAVES (such as thought- systems of the kind Hegel nonsensically postulated as absolute, and which lead to the craze of marxism). The meditation of the infinite lies in recognizing that the body is not the concept of the body but an infinity on its own. Recognizing this fact is not simple, but necessary. If you ask, "What is the essence of the infinite?", then it is obviously existing as rhythm without beginning nor end and beyond any finite concept we make of it. It is not about control, not the mechanical thing. Love is never about control, nor about the opposite as chaos or disintegration. Love is this compassionately anarchistic thing, the denial of all hatred -- or suspension of it, dissolution of it, through immediate contact with it. The intent of healing creates indefinitely many insights. So when tranquility is strong, there is the basis in humour, -- as an actual state, not the idea of it. Humour is creative, as love. The essence of the infinite is not in any concept of union or extension but in the sense of life expressed also as sex. The sexual life is inherently woven together with the creative. Routine is the denial of sex. Only as a footnote to rigid stagnation of mind can routine, such as metal fetishism, have a sexual association. The rich, free sex life of an enlightenedindividual is not bound up into routine exercises involving metal or the like. I take this only as an example, there are innumerable forms of fetishism in sex. To come to the infinite as a sense of life one should not dismiss the body as 'mere X' or 'mere Y'. The body is forever dynamically changing in seen and subtle ways, it is woven by tantric polarities at each scale, level and in every feature. I dare say that only by loving one's own body infinitely can one love any other's body infinitely, -- for as they all belong not one can be denied in the togetherness of all life. Some may ask, "Do you have scientific credible evidence in support of what you are saying?" To this I would first like to point out that science, despite the hilarious utopian writing about science as a fine ideal, is a word typically signifying what those very many people whose job is to 'work in science' is doing when they do their job. And I may agree or disagree to that job definition. To me, knowledge of reality can rely upon elements extracted from incidents reported by scientists, if this is done with utmost care and especially in cases where something is consistently reported by very different- thinking individuals working independently and for decades, at least. I do believe that people working in science has made a correct point, for instance, when they speak of microscopic processes having both wavelike properties and particlelike properties. As far as the very many wider claims go, I tend to categorize them rather as I categorize the writingsof rather secterian or esotheric thinkers like Rudolf Steiner or Annie Besant, or like the strange attempts in Bhagavad-Gita to explain the 'necessity of war'. Individuals may quote the most reliable and well-reported incidents and seek to build a big so-called 'scientific worldview' on this but, alas, it may be just as accurate as the guess of which lottery ticket number will win in a huge context based on a lot of scientific information about numbers. But this is something perhaps not too easily discerned by the many who may not have browsed the reports of science themselves. These worldviews are rather like the attempts to write a good novel around a person actually existing in the past about which exceedingly little is known. I can quote professors and doctors of philosophy, some of which I have discussed this matter over with at great length, in support of the view but that is still more quotation and reference to an authority outside this process of thinking which each can undertake for himself or herself. But let us not underestimate the strengths of the beliefs that some may have, or attain, in some worldviews or Godimages -- and some will want to use reports from scientific enquiries to support them, and others will want to disregard all of these reports and assert their right to believe and propagandize whatever they want -- especially if an esotheric leader or master like Rudolf Steiner has also propagandized it. I feel that both extremes are folly: both claiming that scientific empirical findings are evidence of a worldview and claiming that a worldview is beyond any such findings. I also disagree with Rudolf Carnap (in fact I disagree with just about everyone called Rudolf;) in asserting some kind of impossibility in making a worthwhile metaphysics, or in the socalled 'logicial empiricist' attitude of thinking that only sensory reports of findings are trustworthy sources of data about reality. I believe in intuition as process as well. Believing in intuition as process is to say: there are possibly features of reality which convey directly some data to my mind, without the idea of sensory organ - based cause and effect or correlation. In effect, both Kant and Carnap conveys implicitly a specific set of beliefs about reality as a whole, and about minds as independent of each other and relating to something else called sensory organs, while they seem to, in some of their writing, to suggest that they are themselves free from all worldviews and purely concerned with reality and clear thinking per se. Believing in intuiion is a question of humility to the first assumptions, even as to what 'believing' and 'intuition' is about. In other words, it is a self- reflective process. I have heard writers on the glory of science proclaim that belief in a nonlocal sort of intuition (ie, not merely based on unconscious knowledge but on directcontact with reality beyond the senses) lacks support in scientific studies and that such a belief should be classified as 'quasiscientific' or 'pseduscientific'. I, too, have read the scientific studies that attempt to make people selected, for instance, from the street, read each others' mind and such. But has it occured to these noble criticists of intuition that if people, select on an equal free basis, are studied while they attempt to successfully lift and re- land a present-day spacecraft, they are likely to fail without anybody then saying that the whole idea of flying a space shuttle is nonsense, not to say quasiscientific or pseudoscientific. As some people happen to ride spacecrafts I happen to ride intuition and I would be glad to be tested. And I am pretty sure that if I spent some twenty years together with anyone picked up on a free basis from the street, or so, I could show this person how to succeed at similar tests as well. For while intuition is inborn, natural, immediate and all that, developing a relationship to it by means of our human brain is an exceedingly subtle and extraordinary difficult task unless one is a genius, has fantastic luck (as I have had), or is extraordinarily talented towards it. Nevertheless, in the Yoga4d operating approach basic standard library, I think that there are enough writings to allow anyone to successfully work it out on his or her own. If you are fifteen or twenty when you begin experimenting on relating to intuition, consider it exceptional luck if you get it going on a daily moment-by-moment basis in all senses before you're forty. Please do not think that even if intuition seems to operate well in one or another area that you are basing your life on intuition. To do so, to base one's life on intuition, or to be a light to oneself, carefully enlightened without raising a flag, is something best not assumed. If it's a self-image, why is it there? To justify some stagnant part ofthe mind which is unintuitive and desire-based? To live in enlightenment may be said to be the most worthy personal goal a man or woman can have. However, the basis need to be humble with regard to what this means. There is a lot of lying about this word 'enlightenment', for reasons of self-deceit, power- playand such things. It is far from enlightening, except in the sense of browsing through much falseness, to read everything written on 'enlightenment' and about socalled 'enlightened people', present or ancient. To sketch some of the startingpoint I would consider wise for anyone seeking out such themes, look to people talking not about some legend but enquiring openly and undogmatically into the nature of themind, the psyche, the brain, and all that. Look to people who do not give a simple recipe, whether of five or eight points, nor a big fixed scheme, nor giving a fixed mantra to be used always. Look to sensitive people of a slender build not eating meat and not all the time smiling self-righteously into cameras. Look to people who did not make children here and there and ran away from it; people who do not happily seat themselves amidst a bunch of admirers but who focus on standing alone. Look to people who are not obsessed with complex writing nor are rediculously simple about things which are indeed subtle and alive. Look to those who do not encourage discipleship of any kind, for enlightenment is being a light to oneself, not lending of another's light. Finally, honor not those who condemn women or disregard the enlightening aspect of sex and tantrism. Among those who teach others spiritual things, there are several who say that all paths lead upward the mountain of enlightenment, as long as you stick to one path and don't waver. They obviously say this because they realize shortcomings in their own propagandized path and hope people will stick around them and feed them and pay them even though it's a mediocre path. The excellent path is of course that of being humble yet creative openminded yet meditatively enquiring, not dependent on any path at all. So if we look at the many hundred of pages I've written in the boehmian OAC (operative approach for computers, free and open for all, always, at the Internet website http://www.yoga4d.com and elsewhere, by the undersigned), can we not say that that constitutes a 'path', a 'recipe', a 'program', a 'scheme', or a 'dogma'? I think that any set of letters can be treated as such but some texts have sufficient complexity, subtlety, humor, liveliness, humility and also self-contradiction to suggest that they ought not to be treated as such. Most arrogantly, but honestly, perhaps, I might have the point of view that those pages have more clarity than all of Gothama and J.Krishnamurti's published productions together. Or it is immodest, not arrogant, perhaps, to say on behalf of my own writings what I just said. I will not excuse what I honestly feel, when it is a feeling that presents itsel again and again without me asking for it, but I feel also that the feeling deserves a little explanation or justification. So here are some words to explain the aforementioned feeling -- take them or leave them, but this is said not to insult nor to self- propagandize but to be enquiring. First of all, I regard it as likely that at most a third of the statements attributed to Gothama the Buddha in the most trustworthy of recognized sources are actually his. If we take this point of view together with the fact that there aren't many sentences attributed to Gothama (though way more than what is attributed to the Jesus character in the traditional Christian bible), then it seems that we have rather little to go on as concerns Gothama's real points of view on a great many significant issues. Add to this that the senses of the words of his (unknown variant of) Pali language may almost certainly have changed so that a translation is almost certainly biased by the perspective of the translator. I regard it, for instance, completely unlikely that Gothama taught anything like "indifference" in the modern sense of this word, though I have heard this word listed up alongside the far more likely concepts of "compassion" and "loving-kindness". Yet another point about Gothama: according to what seems acknowledged legend, he lived quite long and after decades of teaching he admitted a female student. Why would someone of complete insight succumb to the masculinism of his times? The same maleness in spirituality characterizes all other world religious systems and has led to what I feel is a great misperception of the world and its imbued sexuality. Turning to Jiddu Krishnamurti, we find tons of writings, as well as some late video taps, and a sense of his teaching can be found in a trustworthy manner. I find it, for myself, the best groundwork done so far on the human mind. I do not find it exceedingly clear, nor completely liberated from fear of the sexual. I find also that some developments in the late "The Ending of Time" on a godhood is not elaborated on, whereas I feel it it is accurate and significant enough to justify the thought that it should have been a foundation all along. My intuitive perception of cosmos involves sensing that it pulsates in the very sexual/orgasmic space between a Goddess and a God whose own origins are unknown, but somehow ultimately related to a fountain of energies of possible existencies. The unfoldment of Goddess and God happens through a rather vague yet deep sectioning into material activity, psychic activity, and spiritual activity. Occasionally a meditation in which not just thought is observed, but a sound is fondled, perhaps once a minute for four or five minutes or so, can lift into attention a feature of cosmos. For an ultimate perception, one may try, say, AmaRama or AmiYana, and feel the femaleness of the first part of the word and the maleness of the last. An entirely different way to explore cosmos, yet related, is that of genital rhythmic massage while swirling energy bodies are visualized and intuitively asked about, perhaps with direct reference to very many beloved friends. By admitting the selflessness of the plurality of masturbation, the mind may regain wholeness and humour in the body each day anew. When you disbelieve the finite, actively, not as a concept, then the infinite comes to your rescue. That is the end of cheating, lying, and so on. For all acts of lying are acts of effort, whereas infinity belongs to the effortless life, which renews itself, protects life, and does not kill. This is, of course, all about harmony. Harmony evokes love, goodness, benediction. Goodness lives in the trust of contrasts working together, also as sexuality. It is blasphemy not to have free sex. It is a duty or principle, perhaps, of listening to joy, acting sexually, and being generous to all life-forms. Parents must, I feel, be exceedingly generous to their children and allow children to work out their own moral codes. Rather than imposing the past, parents should release their children from the chains of conditioning. Parents have set new lifeforms into existence, and they ought to be happy with that and not try to make children into slaves or into someone who should fulfill suppressed desires or ambitions on behalf of their parents. When a hand of a person moves gently around the genital area, say, after yoga, there is a stimulation of brain circuits. If the other hand does writing, the sexual urges flow creatively into what we may call 'copulative writing'. I believe that some of the best of human poetry have been created this way. Sexual liberation may sound like something categorically different than other kinds of liberation but it is all related. For sexuality is a massage or rhythm or dance naturally occuring in between the legs and also in the breasts, lips, feet, nosetip, earlobes, neck, and even hair. This entails a more fully meditative sensuality [which I elsewhere call 'sensualism' or 'sensual ethics' or 'sensualism ethics' or even, in a deepened compassionate caring sense of 'hedon' as joy not mere pleasure, a type of infinite hedonism, and in which open sex is a more apt term than groupsex -- indicating freedom from exclusiveness and willingness to incorporate and include positively and happily and pantheistically, as ground for intelligence and its love in all areas of life, also as rejuvenation -- note added later] and its natural erotic silence. When men and women are getting intimate, not just close, and not just for a night, but for longer durations, the questions of happiness naturally present themselves with newfound intensity. In abstraction, one may argue for just about any idea of happiness. But in relationship, happiness in some sense is the necessary basis for its lucky renewal. And so we must dissolve any hardheaded ideas as to what we really are and really want and ask afresh: what are we really and what do we really want? I am now taking the case where two people of complementary sexuality really are fond of each other. I am sure this can be generalized to many different situations, but in this case I will speak of one as the 'the boy' and the other as 'the girl'. Furthermore, I wish to emphasize that both the boy and the girl are open-minded, unprejudiced, willing to enquire and so on. And on this basis, I ask: what is their relationship when it is at its best and most mature, most welcoming to life as a whole and to their own inward depths? The boy presumably possesses more malish energies than the girl, and the girl more femalish energies than the boy. I speak now from my own experience, not from any particular dogma or scientific or quasiscientific point of view. I would say that the boy and the girl have some kind of nonsymmetrical relationship when it is at its most harmonious, speaking very generally. In a discussion with a teacher in art, Widerberg, we considered seeing the male energy as angular and directed, whereas the female energy is rounded and centered. Anatomically, in the image of copulation, the boy can of course have a directedness which goes into the centredness of the girl. Let us tantrically imagine, in a flash, that all of cosmos, metaphysically, can be construed as a creative interplay between the two. Rather in the sense of Alfred North Whitehead and David Bohm, but more sexually imagined. I believe Ken Wilber also have touched upon this. Ultimately, every person is an infinitely valuable individual. At the level of expression, impression and activity in general, the girl seems happy in nourishing a coherence around the directedness of the boy, which the boy is happy in providing. This interplay suggest a genuine asymmetry, rather as, in the human body, the heart is on one side and the liver is on the other side, and so forth, hile this asymmetry, when well tuned, and affectionately so, is a key feature in balance. The vision of a world which is 'controlled by men' is not a happy one, though. The question is not 'who is to have control' but rather 'what is the natural activity for each, and how does it enter into a responsible relationship to that of all the others?'. The realization of some natural discernment in male and female energies is not necessarily the same as to speak of 'an essential difference' between the man and the woman, though it can be. It depends on the subtle nuances and shifts in meaning which we may give to the word 'essential'. Myself I have learned from the writings of Henry Miller to be willing to take a certain malish role when it is called for in the act of copulation, to the effect of allowing the female to expand into horizons of nothingness, both caressed and dominated by me as a male enacting the myth of the allpowerful and allcaring man lifting the woman skyhigh. More femalish approaches to fucking may seem nice but these may be, in my own experience at least, only as a preparation for the appropriate shift of roles that calls on the real orgasmic totality experience. * * * One can say, 'matter is obviously not spirit, and neither are obviously not psyche', but does the phrase mean anything except to fundamentalists who think that literal meanings are possible? Causation, or cause and effect, occurs at many levels. When somebody affirms healing for somebody else, with passion and intensity, there is a cause and an effect. The aspirin pill is a cause and, added to the body, there is an effect. Spiritual causation works everywhere and nowhere, it is the most nonlocal of all. Intense happineess ensues when all is seen with the understanding of these three levels as one, spirit, psyche and matter. Then existence, it is clear, is neither merely the body nor merely its psyche or ego, nor merely the spirit yet each level has a semi-independent subsistence. As I sense or intuit that telepathy is possible I sense and intuit that these three levels exist. It is not a dogma I ask you as my reader in this moment to accept literally or even metaphorically. I suggest that this is a possible perception. See if you can have it. In the same dialogic yet somewhat 'revelationary' spirit I continue. The truth of the matter is not my concern. I speak from my perception as I am honestly aware of, whether it is the truth of the matter in the objective, independent sense of reality or not. These three levels, then, constitute an affirmation of a grounding of relationship in what is most stable, matter, most inter-relative, psyche, and most coherent, spirit. The coherence or spiritual level can be discussed of how healthy it indeed has been, considering, in the case of humanity, millenia of brutality. The point of view has been raised by a number of independent thinkers, in and outside various contexts, that the spiritual level must not merely be realized but also healed. I agree. In that sense, God or Goddess must Himself/Herself be healed. The pantheist, seing spirit in matter and in psyche can be open and positive about there being a God and a Goddess from which everything emanates, including the three levels. Spiritual existence has its own sexuality. The erotic knows no limits. God and Goddess are erotic in their relationship. Their emanation is therefore beyond strict control. The sexual is inherently creative. Cosmos is not merely God and Goddess but also an influx of a third element, which is not random but relatively free. This freedom has in part a source or origin in yet more subtle levels than God and Goddess, and in part is truly free. The sexual activity of Ama and Rama, or Ami and Yama, or Aya and Ayar, or whatever we may intuit as proper names of Goddess and God, may be in need of healing. When we heal the sexual activity of Amarama (as may be the name of their proper copulation), we are as gods and immortal in that sense. The truth of this matter is not my concern, as said. So don't believe it if you don't want to. The role of philosophy, as I see it, is not to be a hand- maiden to stale dogmatic theologic is to entertain every day afresh an activity in which the activity of the brain is humble to the greatness of life. Or thought is humble to nonthought, that is. Every such activity, however exhillerating in its initial moments and occasionally later, shouldn't get encapsulated into a formula. Philosophy is a hand-maiden and mistress to infinite insight beyond all thought, all scriptures, and all mekka-stones and buildings, as well as beyond all organisations. Philosophy cleanses the mind by a doubt which cannot be institutionalized -- anymore than the notion of being a 'physicist' can be professionalized -- it existed before Aristotle, even. As a musician is not judged by the letters after his name, so is a philosopher not judged by the acceptance of inculcations and indoctrinations, nor the ability to fulfill examinations of a corrupt system. Do not believe in professionalism. Otherwise we are not even starters in the game of enlightenment, renaissance, awakening of love, beyond all time, beyond secularism.