In the land of the fighting peacock

 

“Burmas Historia” (The History of Burma) is a book by Bertil Lintner, a Swedish reporter who is something of an expert on South Asian politics. “Burmas Historia” is probably the only book in the Swedish language dealing with the colorful but tragic history of Burma or Myanmar, as the nation is usually called these days. The book was published in 2014, and therefore doesn´t cover the latest eight years of the Burmese tragedy.

Lintner begins the story in 1057, when King Anawratha of Pagan created the First Burmese Empire. Important figures of Burmese history mentioned in the book include King Mindon, Queen Supayalat, General Aung San, U Nu, Ne Win, Thein Sein and Aung San Suu Kyi. Most of the chapters deal with 20^th century developments, when Burma went from being a British colony to becoming an independent state, only to succumb to military rule from 1962 onwards (with a short period of ostensible liberalization circa 2011-2021). Around 1988, the military regime changed its political spots from “socialist” to “capitalist”, but little seems to have changed in practice.

One of the problems of modern Burmese society is that the military (Tatmadaw) functions as a de facto political party, and directly controls not only politics and the media, but also the economy, not to mention the black market trade. This is the system then-dictator Ne Win passed off as “Burmese socialism” during the Cold War. (The Maoist CPB or Communist Party of Burma regarded the system as “fascist” and fought a people´s war against it, which may perhaps tell us a thing or two!) Another very obvious problem is that Tatmadaw has essentially zero popular support. Every time the military has allowed free elections, the democratic opposition party NLD and its allies have won essentially every contested seat. And yet, military rule always manages to reassert itself. One reason is surely its extreme brutality and total disregard for international public opinion, but other explanations also suggest themselves.

Burma or Myanmar isn´t an ethnically or religiously homogenous nation. The majority is Burman (also called Bamar) and Buddhist, but the large “border regions” are populated by other ethnic groups: Karens, Karenni, Shan, Mon, Chin, Kachin, Wa, Rohingya, etc. While some of these are Buddhists, others are Muslims or have adopted Protestant Christianity. Animism is also strong. Many of the ethnic minorities have long-standing grievances against the Burmans. One example are the Karens, who supported the British colonial power against their erstwhile Burman oppressors, only to become an oppressed minority group again when Burma finally regained its independence. Some of the Karens have converted to Christianity. A peculiar legend exists among Western missionaries about the Karens believing in a “older White brother” who would return one day and give them knowledge of the true god.

Opposition to the military regime is often made difficult by mutual suspicions between the ethnically Burman democracy activists and the minorities. For instance, many Burmans consider the Muslim Rohingya to be “illegal aliens” and didn´t really care when Tatmadaw attacked their settlements. Meanwhile, there is a plethora of armed rebel bands based on other ethnic minority groups. The military is smart enough to enter peace agreements on-off with such rebels, thereby weakening any united resistance against its rule. Mutually beneficial deals concerning illegal trade, or geopolitical considerations, have played a role in these agreements. For instance, the Wa people have a de facto independent state in close alliance with China, something tolerated by Tatmadaw since China is an important backer of Burma. An ironic twist to the story is that China permitted the Wa to overthrow the Communist Party of Burma in this region, when the militant CPB became too much of a nuisance to the more pragmatic Chinese leaders…

Still, the NLD and the ethnic minority groups have been able to unite from time to time, so there is probably still a chance that Tatmadaw will fall one day at the hands of a general popular insurrection. What will happen the day after, is another question entirely!   

Current mood

 

HAPPY HALLOWEEN

 

Credit: 663highland

Among hippies and yippies

 

A former hippie talks about his experiences of cults, counter-culture and various New Age quests during the 1960´s, 70´s and 80´s. It seems Vajrayana Buddhism straightened him out (more or less). 

Actually quite interesting. I discovered this content mostly by chance. 

Nibbana can wait

 

Entertainment value only? 

Oil is an animal

 

Even Thomas Sheridan, our favorite insane conspiracy guy, admits that his speculations in this YouTube clip may be just a tiny bit "out there"...

Summary: Oil is a living creature that is possessing climate activists as a way to stay alive and avoid being killed by over-exploitation.  

The bird is freed

 

Let´s just hope it´s not a saker! 

I översättning

Nån snubbe från Ryssland skrattar

Översättning: "etablissemanget" förbereder allmänheten på att kriget troligen kommer att bli långvarigt, genom att bedriva lite formell "självkritik" om mediebevakningen. 

Ny rapport kritiserar svenska mediers bevakning av kriget i Ukraina

French torpor

From John Michael Greer´s blog:

>>>Sam, there’s actually been some discussion of that among historians. Any number of political shifts in British history could have prevented the industrial revolution from happening, since that depended more than anything else on the ability of the merchant class to amass the huge amounts of capital that made building the first factories possible, and that in turn depended on factors both internal (the government and the nobility permitting that concentration of wealth rather than confiscating it) and external (the complex chain of events that allowed European countries to seize control of maritime trade in slaves, sugar, tobacco, and other high-value products worldwide and cash in to a gargantuan degree).

>>>If the Industrial Revolution hadn’t happened, Britain would likely not have had the economic resources to resist Napoleon, and Europe would have been united into a single empire with its capital in Paris. Lacking abundant energy from coal, the discoveries of the scientific revolution would have been interesting curiosities; technology would have stagnated around the level of 1600; the French Empire would have settled into the same sort of torpor as the Ottoman, Mughal, and Chinese empires of the same period, and eventually it would have been fallen in the usual manner, probably sometime in the 2200s or 2300s. Our technology enabled us to rise faster but it also means that we’re falling sooner.

It just came here to feed

 

It just came here to feed...

Sheridan sits in almost complete darkness, discussing certain demonological aspects of the current crisis. 

Linked for discussion purposes only. 

The rehabilitation of Uppland

A modern statue of Birger jarl 

Originally posted on July 6, 2020

"Det svenska rikets födelse" (The Birth of the Swedish Kingdom) is a book by Dick Harrison, a Swedish professor of medieval history. The book is part of a long series of short popularized books on Swedish and European history written by the same author. However, it sounds more scholarly than most of the others, perhaps because the Swedish Middle Ages is close to Harrison´s main field of expertise. 

During most of the 20th century, the standard view among Swedish historians was that the Swedish kingdom emerged during the Viking Age, more specifically the 11th century, and that the center of the kingdom was Old Uppsala and Uppland more generally. After all, this was what the written sources suggested. To take just one example, in Snorri Sturluson´s "Heimskringla", Old Uppsala is prominently featured everytime the Icelandic writer mentions Sweden. While it´s true that Snorri was often retelling mythology, it could still be asked why *that* particular mythology? Archaeology also seemed to confirm the importance of Old Uppsala and Uppland. However, at the end of the 20th century, a new paradigm emerged which argued that the Swedish kingdom didn´t start to emerge until the 12th and 13th centuries, with the culmination point during the time of Birger jarl (de facto ruler 1248-1266). Even worse for the Uppland local patriots, this new scenario suggested that Götaland, Västergötland in particular, was the cradle of the Swedish kingdom, while Uppland was peripheral. One of the foremost popularizers of this perspective was novel writer and media personality Jan Guillou. Another was Dick Harrison...

Personally, I have no horse in this game, but I always found the Götaland hypothesis somewhat problematic, since it´s obvious that Uppland couldn´t have been a "periphery" in any meaningful sense of that term. Why did king Olof Skötkonung (who was indeed baptized in Västergötland) build a new town in Uppland, Sigtuna, which had the right to mint coins? Why were there royal halls in Uppland? What about all the runestones? And although no "real" Swedish kingdom existed during the 5th century, the gigantic burial mounds at Old Uppsala surely suggest some kind of powerful chiefdom? And what about those pesky written sources...

I therefore find it interesting that Harrison seems to have abandoned the Götaland-centric perspective of his previous popularizations. Instead, he paints a more sophisticated and therefore more believable picture of constantly evolving interactions between Götaland and Uppland. These interactions in turn were part of even broader networks of trade, political alliances, Church missionary activity and cultural diffusion, spanning all of northern Europe from England in the west to Kievan Rus in the east. In this scenario, there is no longer any "cradle of the Swedish kingdom", the whole concept being an anachronism (of course, in a sense it was an anachronism under the Götaland hypothesis, too, since kingdom-formation was seen as a gradual process). 

However, on one point Harrison is adamant: if there is a "founding father of Sweden", it really is Birger jarl. On that point, he is surely correct. Birger Magnusson (his real name) was the first Swedish ruler who created a "real" kingdom with a centralized administration, bailiffs to collect taxes from the peasantry, castles as outposts of the central power in various provinces, and national laws on top of the local ones. After Birger jarl, even virtual civil wars between factions within the nobility were about control of the state. Before Birger jarl, there essentially was no state. A very succesful ruler could create a vast "kingdom" or dominion by prowess in battle and/or clever marriage alliances, but the construction was unstable since it was tied to the king´s person and dependent on support from various local elite groups. Erik Segersäll comes to mind. But, of course, this is not the same thing as a kingdom sensu stricto. 

The main take aways from this extremely interesting book is that the Swedish kingdom evolved slowly through constant interchanges between different regions, that the process could have ended otherwise (perhaps with a much smaller Sweden, or with a Scandinavian kingdom, or with Scandinavia becoming a northern outpost of Germany), and that the process didn´t really reach its fruition until the mid-13th century. It´s also interesting to note the role of Christianity in the kingdom-building process. At this time, Christianity was the "royal" religion which legitimized the idea of an elevated ruler - one god, one king. Which makes me wonder what would have happened if Scandinavia remained pagan...

With those reflections, I end this review of Dick Harrison´s "Det svenska rikets födelse". 

Teach the controversy

 

Credit: Mari bob hairstyle@nekosuki8401 (Twitter)

Originally posted on December 19, 2021. Slightly revised for readability.

The slogan "unite behind the science" is frequently being used to shut down political dissent and questioning. Indeed, you can be both censored and persecuted for questioning "science". And very often, the leftists and the liberals are behind this "science" crusade. Being "unscientific" has become the equivalent of being a witch, or perhaps a KGB agent. 

This scientism is a threat to political democracy, not just in its "static" form, but also in its more "dynamic" form, in which democracy is used to politicize everything and change it - to reform society, in short. There was a time when progressives would see things in precisely this way, rejecting all "scientific" claims that class society, capitalist economy, gender inequality or racial segregation were "natural" and hence outside the proper jurisdiction of the political sphere. And yet, here we are, with authoritarian social engineers and condescending saviors telling us what to do in the name of "science", and insisting on the top of their voices that nothing - not a proper democratic debate, and absolutely not fiery political protests - can trump their questionable decisions cuz scientific. In fact, I wouldn´t even call them social engineers, since those at least tried to change society (sometimes even for the better). The present-day "PMC" just wants to uphold the status quo as it looked like circa 2010 (when most workers had been thrown under the bus long ago). 

By the above "logic", liberals and leftists should have been racist during the 19th and early 20th centuries, uniting behind a science which said that Whites were a superior race, while Negroes were, of course, inferior. Perhaps they should still be racist, since Whites consistently outperform Blacks on IQ tests. Also, science showed that of course women were more stupid, emotional and weak than men. Yet, no true progressive at the time was thinking like this. Why not? Muh science, after all! Clearly, the reasons weren´t "scientific" but political, social, ideological. As for Blacks, they fought racism and slavery anyway, regardless of debates between Whites about the desirability of such a struggle. 

"But X has been scientifically proven" isn´t an argument against a democratic debate and political process, *not even if the claim is true*. A whole number of issues are still on the table and must be dealt with politically, by duly elected officials, a free press, and so on. A course that´s scientifically correct could hurt the economy, disproportionately hit the workers or oppressed minorities, make it harder to defend the nation against foreign enemies, and so on. Science may be consequence-neutral, but politics cannot be, progressive politics in particular. "Group X has lower IQ than Group Y" could be an argument for apartheid, but it could also be an argument for creating more employment opportunities for Group X (in this case, jobs that don´t require high IQ), thereby integrating them into society, strengthening the social cohesion of the nation.  

Ironically, the COVID pandemic is an excellent example. *According to established science, pandemics are best fought by herd immunity*. Had the pandemic been allowed to take its course in the spring of 2020, the whole thing would have been over by summer. Yet, it´s probably true that this is *politically* inexpedient for a whole number of reasons. That´s why leftists and liberals oppose it in favor of hard lockdowns. The claims that this is somehow more "scientific" than herd immunity is just bullshit rhetoric to lock down any political debate about the course taken. And since there is seldom a scientific consensus on any issue, the people who talk warmly about "science" are really saying that a *very specific group of scientists should be handed political veto powers over our elected officials or the popular will*. But on what grounds have this *particular* group of scientists been selected? Obviously on the grounds that they support...you guessed it...the *politics* of the faction making the proposal...

So it always boils down to good ol´ politization in the end.

That purported "progressives" suddenly want everyone to unite behind a classless and perfectly objective Science, or else be stripped of their democratic rights, simply shows what very material class interests they are defending. It is the interests of...their own class.  

Excess deaths

 

Some more disturbing content from John Campbell´s YouTube channel. 

Expect the unexpected

Originally posted on December 23, 2021

There was a time (at least supposedly) when human philosophers were so daring, or so hubristic, that they believed they could know pretty much everything (at least in principle). There are still such people, although today mostly in science: "Why does the universe conform so well to our minds? It must mean we are SPECIAL" (always followed by the usual required huffing and puffing about teleology of course being wrong, and so on). Now, it´s easy to see the anthropocentrism of such a claim. 

Then, Kant took his walking stick and started to obsessively-compulsively walk the streets of Königsberg (a town he never left - must have been a really nice place). After Kant, philosophers drew the conclusion that we can´t know anything at all. Not really. 

But isn´t that equally anthropocentric? When the human mind realizes that it´s (surprise) finite, it punishes the cosmos by lashing out at it, claiming that it may not even exist...since the SPECIAL humans can´t fully comprehend it. Isn´t this just a kind of "sour grapes" hubris? 

And why are regularities seen as the closest thing we can have to "evidence" that there really is an objectively existing outside world? Surely, it´s the other way around? 

It´s the completely unexpected that shows us that the world is, at any rate, independent from *our* minds. An anomaly is the great pointing-out instruction of the cosmos. The talk about regularities is another form of anthropocentrism. After all, we can pretend to be in control of the regular, the predictable (predictable by our philosophies or sciences). The anomalies show us that we´re not really in charge of everything. Or anything. Objectively, mind-independently. And that´s what makes them so scary.

I solved Fermi´s paradox, guys

Previously posted on July 20, 2019.

There are two obvious solutions to Fermi´s paradox, and the reason why the matter hasn´t been put to rest is simply that both answers are intolerable to Modern Man and his belief in Eternal Progress, or rather a very specific view of Eternal Progress.

The first obvious answer is the Rare Earth hypothesis. We really are alone, and we are alone *not* because all civilizations go through a human-like history and eventually destroy themselves in a human-like nuclear war (a typical 1970´s anthropocentric conceit), but because multi-cellular life, or perhaps life as such, only emerged once in the entire universe – here on the third rock from the Sun. I´m not sure why this scenario is so intolerable to so many. Asimov has it, and in his novels, humans eventually conquer the entire galaxy because of it. I mean, there is no one to stop us! It´s almost as if the believers in eternal progress want there to be advanced alien civilizations as a kind of guarantee that we will once reach that stage, too. And a secret wish to fall down and worship the aliens…?

The second obvious answer is that the universe is *teeming* with life, including advanced life, yes, including advanced intelligent life…but most of it is unable to or even uninterested in developing our kind of advanced technology, let alone fly around in space. (If you believe in the supernatural, you could even argue that most life is clever enough to avoid this shitty universe, much preferring the astral delights of some spirit-dimension.) Humans aren´t the only intelligent species on Earth. What about chimpanzees, whales, ravens, or even octopi? Let´s assume whales or octopi evolve for another 100 million years or so. What makes us think they can´t become smarter? And why must this necessarily entail leaving the sea, becoming bipedal and have opposable thumbs? “Because that is the only way we can create a civilization”. No, it isn´t. What makes us think the only way to create a civilization is the human way? What makes us think a species with whale-derived intelligence would want to make the things humans are making? Come to think of it, even creatures driven by pure instinct can create something eerily resembling a civilization. Yes, I´m thinking of ants, which did it millions of years before humans even existed.

And that´s just one planet…

Imagine what weird and wonderful creatures could evolve at other planets. Once again: what makes us think they would be interested in communicating with other star systems (or conquering them), rather than studying the notochord, the immortality of the common cockchafer, or what have you. If they evolved differently from us, they might not even *need* to create a high technology civilization that emits radio waves. That´s something we have to do because we (or many of us, at any rate) wouldn´t survive without one. Other species might not need this kind of jerry-rigged contraption.

Believers in the very specific kind of progress which entails going to the stars can come up with some pretty bizarre scenarios “solving” Fermi´s paradox. Thus, one prominent atheist (who is otherwise a very smart guy) claims that the aliens must be hiding in the empty space in between star systems (that´s why we can´t see them) constantly hooked up to a virtual reality more interesting than our galaxy (that´s why they don´t bother with humans). Analyzing the Bayesian probability for this might be interesting, even apart from the fact that it sounds almost religious…

Next week, your favorite blogger will solve Euthyphro´s dilemma and the theodicy problem. End of transmission.

Quora: Even worse than Wikipedia?

 

Emma Thorne is quite the character, but I´m not sure why I link to her content at all. Maybe it´s the Quora thing, I don´t know...

Creating your own spirit is called "tulpamancy", btw.

Oh no, Ananda Marga was right

An interesting YouTube clip about how the tech companies in Silicon Valley are becoming more and more "religious" and "spiritual", or perhaps quasi-religious. 

The clip is about elite employees, but US companies try to indoctrinate workers, too. 

Below, I link to an Ananda Marga article attacking that particular trend. A bit ironic that a crazy cult is needed to expose the "capitalist" dynamic of this stuff...

AmaZen is no solution to Amazon worker exploitation

From the mouths of babes

 

Geezus, here we go again. 

Authorities in Scotland refuse to investigate whether excess neo-natal deaths are caused by the COVID vaccine, openly saying it´s because it might give the vaccine a bad name! Meanwhile, there are allegations in Britain at large that neo-natal deaths are registered as "stillborn", to avoid a coroner´s investigation. 

Note that the presenter is being ironic when he says that he has confidence in the Scottish authorities - he doesn´t want to be censored by YouTube...

Gain of function

 

Wtf?????!!!!!!

Biden wants to kill you, you wouldn´t believe how!

 

One of the more original right-wing conspiracy theories out there. Yes, Nolte claims that Biden wants to kill Trump supporters by tricking them *not* to get vaccinated?!

"Study shows Democrat campaign to kill unvaccinated Republicans worked"

There is no Hindu, there is no Muslim

 

An English-language Swedish YouTube channel dealing with religion. Here, a long introduction to the Sikh tradition. 

The search for "monotheism" in ancient Egypt

 

Got new respect for the Egyptians after watching him,,,,

Ancient Egyptian religion is often portrayed as a self-contradictory jumble of bizarre and zoomorphic gods, the “highest” accomplishment of the primitive Hamitic mind. *Of course* lofty and elevated systems of philosophy such as Platonism can´t have anything in common with Egyptian religion, and blah blah.

In reality, Egyptian religion was probably like Hinduism: a lot of pretty weird stuff (I mean, green frog gods, plz come on) combined with something that does indeed sound like Platonism or Hermeticism. Or even Christianity!

So Atum, Shu and Tefnut were One and became Three. Shu is the Logos that emerges from Atum, becomes “the divine breath” and creates the world. Then, Shu becomes Osiris (a humanoid deity). Sounds almost like, I don´t know, the Trinity, the Holy Ghost and the Word who became flesh...

A polytheist form of paganism with the usual underlying pantheism and some monotheistic tendencies. Such is the diagnosis.

Where is the closest Egyptian temple so I can pay my respects to Lord Shu? Darn, they have been closed for thousands of years. OK, I suppose I have to go to a High Church church, then! 

Quite the character

 

Good luck with this material...

Polisen tipsar om magiska svampar

Ungdomar har plötsligt blivit intresserade av svampplockning...

Sverige-bilden i fara, nu igen?

Här är svampen du inte får plocka: "Olagligt och farligt"

Oh no, Lyndon LaRouche was right!

 

Behold the true Patriarch of the Third Rome! 

Merging spirit with the Void

 

A short introduction to "internal Taoist alchemy" or Neidan. Not the quicksilver stuff, but more like kundalini yoga. Not sure what´s more crazy, tbh! The discussion on Neidan begins around the 12 minute mark. 

Don´t mess with Kashi Baba

 

Dakota of Earth tells a bizarre story about an Aghori baba who gave him haunted ash from burned dead people...

Sounds like a horror flick!

Strangest in the three worlds?

 

Strangest Hindu myth so far?

Bala Tripurasundari

The Bahai cult

 

Are the Bahai really this stupid? Masked atheist avenger Logicked (who actually lives in Alberta) takes on a strongly fideist Bahai believer. Cult warning on this one!

Come and meet your maker

 

"Quora" is considerably worse than Wikipedia as a source, since any Tom, Dick or Harry can write more or less anything there. Just now, I saw a statement that some Hindus regard Krishna as an avatar of Kali, while Radha in the same scenario is Shiva. Note the gender-swapping! 

No idea if this is true, but it wouldn´t surprise me a bit. The picture above (also posted on Quora) illustrates this syncretism, with Kali and Krishna fused into the same deity. At least I *think* that´s what´s going on here...

There are certainly Shaktas who regard Krishna as Kali´s child. Pun maybe intended.

The fruits of devotion

 

"I know she means well, but isn´t she taking this
Vatsalya Rasa-Pushtimarga thing a bit too far?"

Check Stonehenge at the door, please

 

“The Druid Path: A Modern Tradition of Nature Spirituality” is a recent book by American author John Michael Greer (JMG). There are omnivorous readers, but I´m not sure what to call JMG. Omnivorous writer? “The Druid Path” is a relatively short book, introducing JMG´s personal take on the Druid Revival, a rather heterogenous spiritual movement that goes back to the 18^th and 19^th centuries, when a number of eccentric Britons decided to “revive” the traditions of the ancient Celtic Druids and rather inevitably spawned an entirely new tradition instead. Throughout the book, JMG depicts the Druid Revival as highly individualist, non-dogmatic and non-political. It´s not even a “religion” sensu stricto, but rather a craft (“Druidry” rather than “Druidism”) which can be combined with many different religions. Thus, many early Druid revivalists were Christians, one of the earliest even being an Anglican vicar!

Every Druid is called upon to follow his or her (yes, there are female revival Druids too) Awen or unique individual destiny. If there are any dogmas at all on the Druid path, it´s the firm conviction that everything in the universe is a manifestation of the One Life, and that nature should be at the center of spirituality. This pantheist idea can be combined with both polytheism and monotheism at higher elevations. JMG´s book emphasizes practice rather than theory, and is mostly geared towards solitary practitioners of Druidry, who for one reason or another don´t want to join a local “grove”, let alone a national organization.

One important Druid Revival practice is the mere observation of ordinary nature, including the animals and plants that surrounds us even if we live in suburban or urban settings. Procuring a field guide to the local fauna or flora thus turns out to be a basic Druid activity. Discursive meditation (which is different from Eastern meditation) and various rituals are also important, and so is divination. One purpose of the practice is to connect with the two main energy currents within the One Life, the solar current from above and the telluric current from the bowels of the earth. The divination is based on the otherwise unknown Coelbren alphabet, but another system uses the more famous Ogham. The book ends with a chapter on self-initiation.

There´s relatively little on the almost-annual Druid Revival gatherings at Stonehenge in “The Druid Path”, perhaps ironically, since this decidedly non-solitary ritual is what constantly propels Druidry into the public limelight. I heard of modern Druidism already as a teenager, both because I read a book on occult topics featuring – guess what – a photo of bearded guys with funny banners at Stonehenge, and because some high school buddies had visited the place and reported on the constant three-way clashes between Druids, hippies and the British police which supposedly took place there during the 1980´s. It´s probably still kind of rowdy there even today, with the hippies being replaced by techno-rave fans! But OK, if solitary practice is your goal, it might indeed be better to conduct your rituals and observations in some less crowded setting closer to your domicile…

Another thing *not* mentioned in JMG´s book is Wicca, since – ahem – meso-pagan Druidry isn´t, you know, Wiccan. Don´t worry, though: the same publisher who kindly gave us “The Druid Path” has also published assorted books on Wicca, dutifully promoted at the back cover of JMG´s volume! Funny detail: apparently, the Wiccan founder Gerald Gardner once shared a ritual sword with a prominent Druid revivalist, the two men even making a schedule on when each of them would use it. Or is that just a Druid urban legend? Or perhaps a *Wiccan* urban legend? Hmmm…

Modern Druidry is very niche, so it´s difficult to know who might be interested in a dead-serious introduction to it, but if you are, this could be a good little gateway to this particular form of nature spirituality.

Knock, knock

 

Credit: Mercurygin Cosplay (@mercurybonk)/Twitter

Whoever you might be, "they" are coming for you, bad boy! 

Mysterious European Union press release

The speed of science

 

Somehow, they will blame this on Donald Trump...

Obviously, I take absolutely no responsibility for whatever this might mean.

But I do think the needle just moved a bit!

She looked like such a nice girl (part 2)

 

"Any news from the Outer Crescent, O wise marabou?"
"Not really, my dear monitor, not really"

Tulsi Gabbard has now definitively become a babe version of Donald Trump. Not very surprising, if you ask me... 

Tulsi Gabbard says she´s LEAVING the Democrats

She looked like such a nice girl (part 1)

"How dare you shut down
nuclear power plants?!"

Generation Greta goes nuclear. So can we all go home now?

Greta Thunberg: Germany making "mistake" by ditching nuclear for coal

Super-mångfald eller folkutbyte?

Tobias Hübinette har problem...

"Vem som egentligen sprider den s k folkutbytestesen"

Ramakrishna´s work in progress

 

Ramakrishna Paramahansa (1836-1886) was a well-known Hindu mystic from the Bengal. One of his disciples, Swami Vivekananda (1863-1902), founded the Ramakrishna Order and Ramakrishna Mission, being one of the first Hindus to proselytize in the Western world. At least to an outsider, Ramakrishna and Vivekananda look very different, message-wise. And also mentality-wise! Vivekananda promoted himself in the West as a teacher of Advaita Vedanta, the “pantheist” school of Hinduism associated with the ancient sage Shankara, according to which only Brahman is real. He comes across as a serene and modern meditation practitioner, with a slight New Thought air. By contrast, his guru Ramakrishna was an ecstatic and “crazy saint” who lived most of his life in a Kali temple outside Calcutta! Not very modern, and probably not very serene either.

Since the Ramakrishna Order upholds both, the order must harmonize their respective approaches or philosophies. Luckily, both teachers had “pluralist” tendencies, themselves attempting to harmonize various Hindu traditions and practices. Also, Advaita Vedanta can be interpreted in different ways, not everyone taking the super-strict approach that the world is a literal illusion, that Brahman is wholly passive, and so on.

One possible way to harmonize Ramakrishna with both Shankara and Vivekananda can be seen in the clip above. Since this particular monk usually sounds very Advaita-orthodox, I was surprised by what he says here. It´s more in line with the perspective of Ayon Maharaj (Swami Medhananda), which I discussed before on this blog. Essentially, Sarvapriyananda argues that Ramakrishna´s “Vijnana Vedanta” *is* Advaita, or more specifically, an extension of it, but still dependent on Shankara´s basic non-dual perspective. He points out that Shankara himself wrote devotional hymns to personal deities. Vivekananda apparently established two Ramakrishna-related monasteries in India, one devotionalist, the other non-dualist. Yet, after an intervention of Sarada Devi (Ramakrishna´s “widow”, who was a spiritual teacher in her own right), the non-dualist monks were allowed to worship Ramakrishna´s portrait!

The solution to the conundrum, such as it is, is that the non-dual realizer decides to stay in the phenomenal world. Indeed, this becomes *easier* if he/she has a non-dual realization of Brahman being everything. When the wave realizes that it´s part of the sea, it can easier become friends with other waves, since they are all one. The lecturer also points out that Sarada Devi called Ramakrishna “non-dual” rather than “a non-dualist”, the point being that Ramakrishna was a personal incarnation of an impersonal Divine. Both the personal and impersonal are equally important. Usually, I get the impression that Sarvapriyananda regards devotion to a personal god as a lower stage of realization. Perhaps it is. Here, we have in effect a stage of realization beyond Brahman, with the mystic “descending” again, precisely because everything is God…

In the end, the lecturer admits that these questions are difficult and a work in progress.

When no means no

 

Hope springs eternal

Perhaps not the best "optics" in this one, but there you go...

Karma would be Russia´s newest citizen getting conscripted

Killing Kali

 

Since I comment essentially everything on this blog…

In 1864, the Bengali Hindu mystic Ramakrishna met Tota Puri, a monist Shaiva sannyasin of the Advaita philosophical school. Initially, Tota Puri looked down on the rustic bhakta, who worshipped Kali as his “mother”, instead initiating him (quite brutally) into monist meditation. However, Tota soon realized that Ramakrishna was a more advanced spiritual practitioner than himself. And when Ramakrishna went out of samadhi, he told Tota that Brahman and the Mother were the same. Indeed, the pantheist monk even had a vision of Kali, stopping him from drowning himself in the Ganges!

True story? That´s anybody´s guess, of course, but that is the official version. (The second clip is from an old film about Ramakrishna´s life, featuring his famous encounter with Tota Puri.)

Now, compare this to Sadhguru´s retelling of the same story.

Sadhguru, a contemporary Shaiva Tantrika (not sure if he´s also a monist), claims that Tota Puri converted Ramakrishna to *his* perspective, making Ramakrishna “kill Kali” with a sword, both Kali and the sword being products of Ramakrishna´s consciousness. And presumably the Universal Consciousness? But of course, that´s not what happened. I do realize that gurus often tell stories for didactic purposes, but this one was pretty hard to swallow!

Another thing to investigate on a chilly Sunday evening…

Z stands for Zorglub

 

This can indeed be empirically tested...

Predictions

Appreciating ladybugs in early Buddhism

 

An interesting contribution on early Buddhism posted at the YouTube channel Doug´s Dharma. While most comments from early Buddhist authorities are “anti-pleasure”, there are some notable exceptions…from some of Buddha´s own disciples!

For instance, Mahakassapa, often regarded as a particularly hard ascetic, wrote an appreciative poem about the beauties of nature (including ladybugs). Doug doesn´t know how to square the circles, but his guess is that perhaps aesthetic appreciation of nature was regarded as a somewhat less dangerous pastime than more human-oriented sense pleasures. Nature was associated with solitary practice and isolation from the status-seeking of human society. And, of course, its beauty was more “natural”.

It seems Buddhism has always been very contradictory, and not altogether pessimistic or nihilistic, as it´s often portrayed in Western literature on the subject.

Ye

 

Vargatider stundar

 

Credit: emdavfro(@emmdavfro)/Twitter

Där en del ser faror, ser andra möjligheter...

En desperat medelklass är farligare än fattiga mödrar

Novitjok forever

Vad är det här för jäkla dumheter? Och hur kunde ett polisingripande *bokstavligt talat inne på SVT* nästan bli minneshålat av svenska medier???

SVT-reporter greps efter mordskämt om M-politiker

Skämtet bakom polisinsatsen på SVT: "Till kommunisten"

Prevalent as measles

 

Alan Watts talks about mysticism. Or rather about a very specific kind of mysticism, which he then asserts is universal and the foundation of all religions. Which it isn´t, of course. Watts lived during simpler times...

Gone forever, happy anyway

 

"Sure hope I get extinct soon!"

Mesopotamian murals depict a horse-like mystery animal 500 years before the introduction of the domesticated horse to the Middle East. Known as the kunga, its exact identity was recently revealed by genetic research: it´s a hybrid between a Syrian wild ass and a domestic donkey. 

The hybrids were probably sterile, making the kunga dependent on human-overseen cross-breeding for its very existence. When the horse was introduced, kungas fell out of favor and so disappeared. Today, the Syrian wild ass is extinct due to overhunting, so the kunga cannot be restored (at least not at the current level of genetic engineering). 

But then, who the heck wants to be a kunga anyway, pulling the chariot of some Bronze Age Mideast king?

Let´s all do the kunga!  

Kunga (equid)

The Great Daoist Disharmony

An oversized gavialid crocodilian, which may have feasted on fresh human flesh, was hunted to extinction by said humans, and even ritualistically beheaded. Or so new research suggests. 

And yes, it all happened in China. You know, the harmonious Yin-Yang civilization of Daoism and Buddhism...not!  

At least we now know where Chinese dragon legends come from. May you live in interesting times...

Off with their heads!

Croc with his head!

Hanysuchus

Putin´s predicament

An interesting but somewhat difficult article from 2018, arguing that Putin´s Russia lags behind the West and China (and even the former USSR) when it comes to science and technology. It "only" deals with the civilian sector, but it´s difficult to believe that the backwardness, corruption and cheating in the non-military sector doesn´t affect the military-industrial complex, too. 

My very tentative conclusion: if Ukraine (which is even more underdeveloped than Russia, according to the author) is provided with heavy doses of Western aid, it probably can defeat Russia. 

Less tentative conclusion: the real enemy is China. Russia is just a proxy for Beijing, producing whatever raw materials they need to fuel the New Chinese Century... 

Russia´s Technological Backwardness

Paranoid as folk

 

Thomas Sheridan is his old paranoid self here. Demonic possession due to "the needlecraft", an analysis of the horror flick "Hereditary" (which I haven´t seen) and speculations concerning various Mideast gods such as Baal all point to the same conclusion: Choronzon or The Babbler in the Abyss is back, feeding on unsuspecting victims through the Internet. 

Well, *that* part, at least, isn´t so hard to believe! 

Choronzon is apparently a "super-demon" mostly associated with the workings of Aleister Crowley, but he is also mentioned in Chaos Magick. Sheridan regards the creature as wholly negative. The really good guy is Paimon (depicted as evil in "Hereditary").

There are also scary discussions about "the steam people" and "wormfolk".  

RT doesn´t imply endorsement. 

"We are a salamander"

 

This is probably how you sound after eating too much magical mushrooms. Terence McKenna was apparently a California hippie 20 years too late. Nothing he says here makes any kind of sense whatsoever. "We are a salamander". Sure, brother...

Or this one: "The story of Eden in the Bible is the story of world history´s first drug bust". 

LOL.

You are the universe

 

Fascinating in a way, but the soundbite "You are the universe" probably isn´t very clever when trying to convince narcissistic Californians about the need for ecological consciousness (or anything really). 

But Toynbee was right

 

Mimesis in action?

First posted on this blog in August 2018. Not sure if all conclusions still hold water, but who cares? ;-)

“A Study of History” is Arnold J Toynbee's impossibly large 10-volume work about the rise and fall of human civilizations. Most people have neither the time nor the inclination to read the entire opus. A two-volume abridgment has therefore been published, with an appreciative preface by the author. It's safe to assume that most people haven't read the entire abridgment either – it's still a monumental work. I admit that I belong to the majority, having read a few chapters and skimmed a few more in the first volume only. My review is therefore an educated layman's first impression of Toynbee's labor of love. But, as they say, you never get a second chance to make a first impression!

Toynbee argues that civilizations arise due to a pattern he calls “challenge and response”, carried out by “creative minorities” who inspire the inert mass to imitate their innovations, a process Toynbee calls “mimesis”. Conversely, a civilization breaks down when the creative minority stops being a trail-blazer, instead settling down as a coercive “dominant minority”. This eventually creates a schism in the body social, with the dominant minority being threatened by both an “internal proletariat” and an “external proletariat”. After a “time of troubles”, the dominant minority seemingly solves the problems of civilizational decline by creating a “universal state”. In reality, the universal state is an Indian summer and finally collapses under the dual strains of internal and external “proletarian” challenges. The internal proletariat creates a “universal church”, often based on ideas imported from another, perhaps older, civilization. The external proletariat simply creates barbarian war-bands. After a period Toynbee calls “Völkerwanderung”, a new civilization arises under the inspiration of the universal church, and the cycle begins anew.

As critics of Toynbee are fond to point out, this scenario is obviously based on the rise and fall of Greco-Roman Antiquity and its subsequent replacement by the civilization of the Middle Ages. The “universal state” is the Roman Empire, the “universal church” is Christianity, the “internal proletariat” consists of everyone in some sense disadvantaged by the growing power of the Roman oligarchy, and the “external proletariat” is identical with the Germanic and Hunnish invaders. The curious technical term “Völkerwanderung” is the German designation for the great migrations of peoples that took place immediately before and after the so-called fall of Rome. It's not overtly clear how this neat scheme can be applied to other civilizations! The cycles of Muslim civilization seem to follow different patterns, not to mention the Phoenix-like Chinese and Egyptian civilizations. Sometimes, Toynbee's reasoning makes little sense even when discussing Greco-Roman antiquity. Why does he date the “breakdown” of the ancient world to the Peloponnesian Wars? The term “breakdown” denotes the point when a civilization stops growing and maturing, and hence isn't necessarily identical to an actual collapse. However, it still doesn't make much sense. Wasn't Greek civilization growing under Alexander the Great and the Ptolemies? Toynbee dates the “breakdown” of Egyptian civilization to the end of the Pyramid Age, claiming that 2000 years of Egyptian history and splendid achievement were really a kind of afterthought to the “universal state” of the Old Kingdom! The breakdown of “Syriac” civilization is said to be the dissolution of king Solomon's kingdom in Biblical times, surely a strange perspective on the matter. Why is the Abbasid Caliphate rather than the Ottoman Empire the “universal state” of the Muslims? The reforms of Peter the Great in Russia and the Meiji Restoration in Japan, which both saved their respective civilization by Western modernization, don't seem to fit Toynbee's neat pattern either. It's almost as if Toynbee attempted to reinterpret all of world history on the Greco-Roman-medieval model, really a Euro-centrist perspective. This is ironic given Toynbee's considerable erudition concerning non-Western civilizations.

More interesting is Toynbee's implicitly spiritual perspective. The great historian was inspired by French philosopher Henri Bergson and explicitly mentions him a number of times. The term “creative minority” is based on Bergson's “creative evolution”. The creative minority consists of charismatic personalities, similar in many ways to religious visionaries or mystics. This is taken from Bergson's book “The Two Sources of Morality and Religion”. Toynbee compares the activity of the creative minorities to Plato's idea that the philosopher, after “ascending”, must then “descend” and offer solutions for the improvement of his polity (Arthur Lovejoy had the same interpretation of Plato. Admirers of Ken Wilber, take note). Charismatic personages also play an important role during periods of decline and fall, when they are seen as “saviors” in the messianic sense rather than as, say, great law-givers. One thing I always wondered about is *why* Toynbee believes that humans create civilizations, or why he believes that many of them eventually fail. He clearly doesn't see material factors as decisive. Technology can progress even in an “arrested civilization” such as the Ottoman Empire, and foreign conquerors are usually successful only because the vanquished have already vanquished themselves by internal processes. The Bergson connection gives the answer: Toynbee believes that history is the working out of the élan vital, presumably on very crooked timber! As far as I understand, Toynbee was Christian and believed in “Original Sin”…

An observation I found interesting is that the “universal church” is based on ideas imported from outside the dominant culture of the “universal state”. Thus, Christianity (originally from “Palestine”) became important in the Roman Empire and post-Roman Europe, while Mahayana Buddhism (from India) became important in China, Korea and Japan. Islam became strong in Asia Minor, Persia, India and Indonesia, outside the Arab World where it first emerged. Note also that Christianity and Buddhism (but not Islam) is almost extinct in the land of its origins! This raises interesting questions concerning the next Western “universal church”. Will it be a counter-culture based on Theosophy and various Hindu- and Buddhist-derived doctrines? Or will it be Christianity, not because it's “traditionally Western” but, on the contrary, because it's seen as virtually “foreign” in the secularized West? Perhaps Christianity will be reintroduced by missionaries from East Asia? Islam is another possibility, but in this case, due to massive immigration of “external” proletarians. Note that Toynbee believed that the universal church is the embryo of the next civilization. If the author is right, our secular Über-religion is in for a rough ride! As a side point, I note that Toynbee admits that his analysis of the universal church tends to break down the strict barriers between civilizations he postulates in his first chapters, since the universal church is connected to massive cultural diffusion between civilizations.

In contrast to Oswald Spengler, Toynbee didn't believe that Western civilization was necessarily doomed to decline and fall. This issue is dealt with at length in the second volume of the abridgment, which I haven't read. Perhaps the famous historian was unduly influenced by the heady optimism of the immediate post-war period? Today, Arnold J Toynbee's study of Greco-Roman history suddenly sounds very prescient…and very scary. Indeed, it's scarier than usual, since the “universal state” (Pax Americana) is already dead, and no “universal church” is visible on the horizon, only a very large amount of hungry “external proletarians”…

These, then, are my first impressions of Arnold Joseph Toynbee's “A Study of History”.

Organic unity

 

Not sure why this is supposed to be a good thing...

Whitehead in the temple of Kali

 

Dakshineswar Kali Temple in Calcutta,
where Ramakrishna spent most of his life.
Credit: Knath

“Advaita and Dvaita: Bridging the Gap. The Ramakrishna Tradition’s both/and Approach to the Dvaita/Advaita Debate” is an article by Jeffery D. Long, originally published in “The Journal of Vaishnava Studies”. Long describes it as an essay in the service of cross-traditional philosophical diplomacy. The author is a member of the Ramakrishna Order, a Hindu organization associated with the 19^th century Bengali mystic Ramakrishna, but actually founded by his disciple Swami Vivekananda. A promoter of the monist Advaita Vedanta philosophy (or perhaps a revised “Neo-Advaita” version of it), Vivekananda was one of the first Hindus to actively proselytize in the Western world. He is probably the main “culprit” behind the Western view of Advaita as “the” Hindu philosophy per excellence. Presumably, he is also chiefly responsible for interpreting Ramakrishna in an Advaitist manner.

I think it´s obvious that Ramakrishna was a very different kind of cat, and while Long tries to harmonize the two gurus, my take is that he tilts in Ramakrishna´s direction. This makes it possible for him to do some intra-Hindu ecumenism, since the actual positions of Ramakrishna were hardly Advaitist. The main target for the cross-traditional diplomacy are the Vaishnavas, that is, the devotees of Vishnu or one of his avatars conceived as the supreme personal god (Ishvara or Bhagavan). Vaishnava bhakti presupposes that there is a distinction between God and humans, which in turn makes the monist Advaita philosophy anathema. To Advaita, the goal is for the human soul to merge with Nirguna Brahman, the impersonal “god” beyond all form or attributes. In some versions of this perspective, devotion to a personal god is incorporated as a lower stage of practice, but as the practitioner progresses on the path, he is supposed to realize that “god with form” is just as illusory as our separate human souls and only has a relative existence. (This seems to have been Vivekananda´s view.) To a Vaishnava, this is of course unacceptable.   

Long believes that what he calls “Ramakrishna Vedanta” is closer to mainstream Vaishnava schools of thought than to Advaita Vedanta. He compares it to Vishishtadvaita, Bhedabheda and Acintya Bhedabheda, which could be seen as intermediary positions between the strict dualism of Dvaita (another Vaishnava school) and the monism of Advaita. A Christian might presumably call these schools “panentheist” in contrast to both pantheism and theism. Long points out that bhakti (devotionalism) played an important part of Ramakrishna´s spiritual practice, making it close to Vaishnavism. Nor did Ramakrishna subordinate bhakti to jnana (here translated “gnosis”) in the Advaita manner. Rather, Ramakrishna believed that both bhakti and jnana were equally valid paths to liberation (not to mention several others!). He incorporated some ideas from Advaita Vedanta, such as the existence of Nirguna Brahman, while affirming that there are many paths to the divine. Indeed, Ramakrishna had intense mystical experiences of both a “dualist” and a “monist” nature, and even saw Jesus at one point!

Long is fascinated by Alfred North Whitehead´s process philosophy and attempts to interpret Ramakrishna Vedanta in this light. In a short article like this one, I don´t think he succeeds very well, but the gist of it is that he identifies the basic metaphysical principle of Whitehead´s system as “Creativity”, which takes many different forms. Says Long: “In mokṣa, one becomes consciously and joyfully what one has actually always been unconsciously (and not so joyfully)–a co-creator, with God, in the ongoing process of the universe, with unlimited creativity. One can submerge oneself in the infinite bliss of Nirguṇa Brahman, enjoy eternity in Heaven with God, or return to help others, like a Bodhisattva. The forms which mokṣa takes vary with the paths that are taken to it. This is apparent from the traditional accounts of Ramakrishna’s sādhanas, in which the type of experience he had at the culmination of his practice varied with the practice itself.” 

I´m not sure why Whitehead is needed at all, since Ramakrishna´s ideas seem to work pretty well all by themselves. Long points out that Ramakrishna is sometimes referred to as a “Shakta universalist”, and this does indeed seem to be the solution to the puzzle. As Long also points out, Whitehead´s Creativity could be seen as another name for Shakti. Shakti (worshipped by Ramakrishna as Kali) is the creative energy or force behind the universe, taking countless of different forms, both personal and impersonal, while also transcending them all. 

Does more really need to be said? 😉