18.09.09
Shiva and Dionysus?
Looking at still another book by Danielou, Gods of Love And Ecstasy, The Traditions of Shiva and Dionysus, which continues the themes demonstrated here in some of the selections.
But I think this approach fails to distinguish between historical analysis, and the embrace in almost cultic fashion of very ancient religious forms.
Actually, we can hardly know what those sources really were.
But the basic point appears sound: there is a substrate still visible of very ancient religous forms going back to the Neolithic.
Whether this is really connected with Dionysus, or whether the languages said to be related really are (e.g. Sumerian. Dravidian, Basque, et al.) is less clear.
17.09.09
Jains, before Mahavira
From Danielou’s history of India: on the Jains
It is likely that the naked sages of India-known in Greece and
throughout the ancient world-were Jains. Read the rest of this entry »
Dravidian source of Samkhya?
An interesting quote from Danielou from the Introduction to
Shiva and the Primordial Tradition.
Throughout all of his work, Danielou emphasizes the need to study
the traditional Indian sciences, to translate them, and to ensure their
preservation, starting with the ancient cosmological theories of Samkhya.
He provides a considerable bibliography on these theories in his While
the Gods Play, with the following presentation:
We do not have the original texts of the ancient Samkhya, which
was not in the Sanskrit language, but we are acquainted with its
Dravidian terminology thanks, in particular, to the Manimekhalai,
which is written in the Tamil language …. The teachings of Kapila,
the dark-skinned sage who was the first to teach the Samkhya in
the Aryan world, were collected by his spiritual heir, the magus
Asuri ….
Reconstituted and translated into Sanskrit at the time of the
Shaivite revival, at the beginning of the Christian era, they were
the cause of a prodigious renaissance that lasted until the Islamic
invasions in the twelfth century. Only part of these texts has been
published, and very few have been translated. Sumerian paral-
lels have, moreover, confirmed their authenticity. The knowledge
they reveal about the nature of the universe, the origin of matter
and life, biology, astrophysics, the relations between thought and
language, goes far beyond the most audacious concepts of modern
science ….
According to the concepts of the Samkhyas, the universe is
made up of two fundamental elements, consciousness and energy.
… Matter is merely organized energy. There is no material ele-
ment that exists without being inhabited by consciousness. No ele-
ment of consciousness exists without an energy-giving support.”
15.09.09
Danielou book: Shiva and the Primordial Tradition
Shiva and the Primordial Tradition: From the Tantras to the Science of Dreams (Paperback)
Was just reading this other work, quite short, of Danielou, and, despite its limitations, very interesting: have we at last found the key, in the open, to Indian historical religion.
Danielou shows how it is not the antithesis of Buddhism/Hindusism, for example, that illuminates Indian religious history, but the mutual of all these later upstarts with the underground stream of primordial Shivaism, the source of yoga, samkhya, and–tantra!
It is a complex history, then, and figures such as Aurobindo, Gandhi, and Vivekananda as amateurish as we are compared with this stunningly ancient tradition, so….
Samkhya history
James said,
15.09.09 at 10:29 am ·
One great thing about the Samkhya/Patanjali(divested of the misleading commentaries) is that it offers some sort of ontology (it is probably better if you ditch the preposterous emanationist scheme and focus on the basic framework) and distinguishes between awareness(no causal efficacy) and the unity of consciousness/materiality(part of prakriti). In that way, it is a lot clearer than the Pali sutras which are more epistemological in orientation. I’ve often tried to bring this point up with Theravadin Buddhists only to end up jumping into a bunker since this is considered taboo. Most of them are just content to kill off more and more brain cells with useless debates about “anatta” (obviously seems to be some sort of pragmatic apophatic meditation technique in the early suttas rather than a metaphysical statement). Take a look at a look at this useless debate over the term vinnanam anidassanam(obviously seems to refer to some unconditioned awareness outside of the skandhas) and whether it contradicts the the Abhidhamma:http://www.abhidhamma.org/forums/index.php?showtopic=10
Note that Patanjali spells it out:
“Then, pure awareness can abide in its very nature.”
“Otherwise, awareness takes itself to be the patterns of consciousness.”
http://www.arlingtoncenter.org/Sanskrit-English.pdf
Good points: we might be better off going back to the original sources of Samkhya.
Bennett’s book little known
James’ comment actually referred to Bennett, not Julian Jaynes (whose theory I find problematical).
James said,
11.09.09 at 4:22 pm ·
It is strange that few people have heard of this book. Despite a lot of the dubious speculations, it makes mainstream speculations from Dennett, Searle, etc. look like kid’s play. It’s disconcerting to think how easy it is to be subversive to Big Science’s worldview and yet none of its groupies seem to realize how vulnerable they really are.
It is a brilliant book, marred by some compromises with Gurdjieffianity, and some excessive bending of categories past the point of science.
One thing to keep in mind is the censorship of a Darwin critic, and/or New Age thinker. But, sadly, it is also true that the Gurdjieff world destroys all its creative types, a kind of built in negation of disciples.
Moral: don’t be a disciple! Gurdjieff et al. will destroy your creativity and all your projects, a kind of guru jealousy and super authoritarianism.
13.09.09
Michio Kaku’s Hyperspace, Bennett’s sources
It is worth looking at the physicist Michio Kaku’s Hyperspace which has some material on the episode of so-called Kaluza-Klein theory in the twenties. This was a five-dimensional extention to Einstein’s General Relativity that was stunningly original for its time, falling by the wayside for several decades, but not resurfacing in a more general form in the various forms of so-called string theory.
It was Bennett’s keen-eyed insight to pick up on Kaluza-Klein in the twenties, and proceed to his own version of that, the six-dimensional time-space version of an earlier idea in Ouspensky.
Madness, but consistent madness
One reason I don’t reject Bennett out of hand is that his account is not a ‘spiritual’ myth, but a Samkhya psychology, which is technically a form of naturalism, or at least a unitary spectrum including the ‘spiritual’ and the ‘material’ in one system.
The problem is that Bennett’s system is redundant, and succumbs to the design argument, after going to the trouble to producing a form of naturalism.
The issue can be seen from careful study of what he does with the Samkhya gunas, the triads of ‘being, function, will’, entering into a vast cosmic hierarachy of cosmic laws. To suddenly use the design argument on those laws is a violation of his own procedure, to the chaotification of his whole scheme. But I can see the point: he can’t imagine how the cosmic laws could work, so he introduces a design interpretation, to the unending confusion of many readers.
But I can, at least in principle, imagine a set of cosmic laws that follow the original Samkhya scheme, and the way in which these are beyond the distinctions of ‘mechanical/conscious’, giving them a strange and uniquely potent form as ‘generators’ in relation to evolution.
In principle! In practice, the whole thing is close to a form of madness, but at least as a model put on paper it is a consistent brand of madness.
More from Danielou
Another passage from Danielou’s A Brief History of India about the probable pre-Aryan source of the Ramayana (!) and the basic orientation of primordial Saivism predated the Aryan phase of India, and the source of the basics of Indian religion in its archetypal yoga/tantra polarity.
The argument makes sense in general terms, despite my reservations (I simply don’t know) about the comparison of Shiva and Dionysus, or any specifics about an early Indo-Mediterranean cultural matrix.
Nonetheless, such an idea, details apart, makes sense of the Neolithic in human history: we are missing the key seminal innovations that predate the onset of higher civilization.
The narrative that gives a particularly interesting view of the pre-
Aryan world is the Ramayana. This narrative, of which several shorter
versions are given in the Puranas, was based on ancient sources, drawn
up in the form of a long epic poem in Sanskrit by a sage called Valmiki,
whose Yogic power allowed him to “see” the events of this distant past.
The period in which it was drawn up is uncertain, though very ancient.
The Ramayana was later incorporated among the sacred books of the
Hindus. Although the Valmiki version was adapted in order not to
offend the concepts of Aryanized Brahmanism, none of the chief ele-
ments of the narration allow it to be dated within the Aryan period.
The Ramayana is assuredly an adaptation of very ancient non-Sanskrit
texts. Read the rest of this entry »
Bennett vs Jaynes
In spite of what he has previously said, Bennett leaves open the possibility that consciousness is also changing in historical times (by the nature of the case that might be true, also Think of a jungle jim: inventing one and using it are two different things. The emergence of consciousness and its development can be separate aspects).
The point here is that Jaynes’ view, while cockeyed, perhaps points to something real: man is undergoing an accelerated transformation of his consciousness in historical times.
Nevertheless, despite my reserve about Bennett’s overall system it makes sense to say, as he does, that man’s ‘consciousness’ is a species characteristic that appears at the threshold of hominization.
Let us here anticipate conclusions to be reached later and set down
the stages which man has covered in his progress up to the present time.
Starting with Australopithecus, we can distinguish the following main steps.
First step. Some hominoid stock selected for organization of sensitivity corresponding to characteristics of man. Development of biped habit and increasing use of fore-paws for rudimentary
skills. Leads to Australopithecus 3-4 million years B.P.2nd step Australopithecus endowed with consciousness. Appearance of
first true men 1 1/4 to 1 3/4 million years B.P. leads to Homo erectus.3rd step Homo erectus produces many sub-species and varieties. Con-
structs tools and has a basic speech. Development of sapiens
with full cranial capacity 150,000-180,000 years B.P.4th step.The appearance of Homo sapiens sapiens with individual
creativity. 37,000-42,000 years B.P.5th step. Homo sapiens sapiens develops social consciousness, agri-
culture, settlements, and a complex language structure.
11 ,000 years B.P.6th step. ‘Modern Man’ comes forward during the time of the great
Revelations. 2,000 years B.P.
Consciousness and evolution in Bennett
It might be of interest to compare/contrast Bennett and Julian Jaynes on consciousness.
It might help to look at the basic framework for Bennett’s views, which are not anywhere near standard science at this point: he brings in a mythology of cosmic beings (demiurge, cosmic individuality, …) that put him in the realm of science fiction, and he also considers ‘consciousness’ to be a ‘cosmic energy’ in a domanin behind life, consciousness being the lowest in a tetrad: consciousness, creativity, being the two lowest. His scheme remains of interest, despite its outlandish character, if only because it ought to be possible to translate his thinking into what might at least theoretically be a coherent ‘upside down scientism’. Whatever the case, it is a reminder that the evolution of consciousness is REALLY hard, and beyond out current understanding, even in principle.
The stage of hominization, then, is the stage of consciousness being injected into man by demiurgic cosmos, followed by soul formation in relation to the creative energy….
Weird stuff. I don’t believe a word of it, and it is a highly schematic set of concepts, but it is a provocative to standard views, including those of the Intelligent Design movement, who refuse to answer to questions about who these designers are. Bennett has a whole zoo of them.
The point here is that consciousness appears at the point of hominization, and is different from what Bennett calls ‘sensitivity’, which is what we normally call, wrongly according to Bennett, ‘consciousnesss’.
This is a challenge to Jaynes who thinks that consciousness appears very late, almost within the last few millennia. Clearly that is problematical, but as we will see even Bennett has a take on this after his own fashion.
The place of mind is at one of the two great discontinuities of the
Natural Order-the other being the transition from inert matter to
living forms. Historically, the appearance of mind is an event equal in
significance to the appearance of life. This is generally agreed, but its
importance is obscured by the tendency to regard evolution as a con-
tinuous process in which each new development emerges out of those
that came before. Read the rest of this entry »
11.09.09
Consciousness evolving in historical times?
http://www.julianjaynes.org/
Here’s a website devoted to Jaynes.
Anyone who feels moved to discuss Jaynes here or cite links/material about his theory are welcome to do so.
I am as critical of Bennett as I might be of Jaynes, but there is something of curious interest in Jaynes’ discussions.
Note that we enter into the chaotification of terminology: what does Bennett and/or what does Jaynes mean by the term ‘consciousness’.
Why are gods and idols ubiquitous throughout the ancient world? What is the relationship of consciousness and language? How is it that oracles came to influence entire nations such as Greece? If consciousness arose far back in human evolution, how can it so easily be altered in hypnosis and “possession”? Is schizophrenia a vestige of an earlier mentality? These are just some of the difficult questions addressed by Julian Jaynes’s influential and controversial theory of the origin of subjective consciousness or the “modern mind.”
Jaynes challenge to scientism
Comment on Julian Jaynes reference
James said,
11.09.09 at 4:22 pm ·
It is strange that few people have heard of this book. Despite a lot of the dubious speculations, it makes mainstream speculations from Dennett, Searle, etc. look like kid’s play. It’s disconcerting to think how easy it is to be subversive to Big Science’s worldview and yet none of its groupies seem to realize how vulnerable they really are.
Caldwell’s book on immigration issue
Caldwell’s Reflections on the Revolution in Europe
One of the traps into which many Westerners fall in their approach to sufism is a variant of the kind of chauvinism we see in many Islamicists.
Are you going to be a Kaffir Sufi, Mr. Westerner? Never, I fear.
Be advised.
It seems that Gurdjieffianity would be free of this, and it is, and yet something like it enters anyway: there is the same contempt for Westerners in its formulation and its wish for a New Age to destroy liberal man and secularism.