Goddess Space and Goddess Matter - MAYA magic creative power

[haselhurst]

Goddess Space and Goddess Matter - MAYA magic creative power

Hello everyone,
I received this interesting letter from Julian, but his computer does not allow him to post in forums, so he asked if I could add his letter (below).
Hope people find it interesting!
Geoff
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Hi Geoff,
Let me first tell you how i found out about you. I had been reading a really interesting essay from Ralph Metzner at;
(http://futurepositive.synearth.net/2002/03/04)
and was also reflecting on reality --as i do a lot. got the insight to try 'particle / wave ecology' at google and found you! thought i was hip, but hadn't heard of WSM before.
i am your regular surfer generalist explorer which includes intellectual research and ecstatic exploration. i try and encourage especially debate about the latter at several online forums i am with.

OK ...first let me briefly introduce myself.....i am English/Afro and am an artist--who hates the art world. ........And i see hallucinogenic experience as the KEY for resolving our alienated mindset which has grown through patriarchal indoctrination both west AND east...as i will explain as i go on BTW, i actually met and shook hands with Fritjof Capra a few years back at the Learning from the Earth conference in Liverpool. I love him, and try and promote his and others Eco-literacy whenever i can.

What critique i offer regarding your using Eastern metaphysics as a prototype for your insight of WSM: I would rather a more GODDESS emphasis!.....when i say 'patriarchal', i am meaning the mindset that denigrates MATTER / Nature. no matter how subtle this denigration may be. one could argue Eastern metaphysics is err the subtle variety, though its INFLUENCE has brought about such Nature-negative cults such as Orphism (for example read 'From Orphism to Gnosticism' online. just type title at google) who created a dogma which they wrote down, which suggested humans were divided between a good part and a bad part, and the former was trapped in the body, and Nature--thus their saying 'soma sema' meaning 'the body, a tomb'. So, unlike the originally Dionysian orgia which they reformed which had been a CELEBRATORY ecstasy, the Orphics introduces asceticism (mixed with orgia), with the idea of 'purification' rather than celebration of life and death. The orphics goal was to ESCAPE the 'circle of life and death'. so their idea of ecstasy was as 'katharsis'...a means TO the end / escape! As i am saying, it is believed that Orphism was the first Western mysticism, and thus must have had some form of contact with Eastern mysticism. The latter variest--via the Upanishads claims there is a 'One' and a 'Many'. This is subtle duality:

There were Eastern thinkers aware of the hidden dualism in most conceptions of unity. The way they attempted to reconcile this involved using paradoxes that mysteriously evoked the idea that the separate parts are both separate and not separate at the same time: "The One and the Many" (in Hindu terms) and "Nirvana is samsara" (in Buddhist terms), meaning "The Void is the world of form" are examples of this. We have no problem with constructions that point to different things happening at different levels (the different levels here being unity and diversity). Paradox is useful as an indication that a levels shift is occurring - but not if it is used to cut off inquiry, as is usual. Our problem with such conceptions is that they are embedded in a world view that acts as if unity were somehow more real. The view of enlightenment that is part of such constructions still involves shedding ego and identifying with only one side .....The ideology of Oneness constructs its hidden dualism by making the whole more sacred than its parts. Sacralizing unity places it in another realm, "the spiritual". Once anything is made sacred, sacrificing to it and for it is inevitable" ( The Guru Papers: Masks of Authoritarian Power, by Joel Kramer and Diana Alstad, pages 317-318, ISBN 1-883319-00-5)

This is why that although excited at finding your insights, i see you using Eastern metaphysical concepts to back them up. They also have the belief in 'Maya '...which is oftentimes meant as 'illusion'. Now the etymology of that term is utterly connected to 'mother' and of course 'matter'....so as you can see, this is the pattern of the patriarchal mindset in its many masks. in this case it will call Nature 'illusion' and along with this will come the mythical attributes of 'seducer', 'enticer'...Zen Buddhism calls this 'Mara' which means 'delusion. Not that long ago--although not a Zennist, i joined a Zen forum online, and broached the subject of hallucinogenic experience. of course i got kinda attacked about this. one Zennist warned that using them can 'entangle on in 'Mara' / 'delusion'...HAH!....you can intuit that fear. That along with Western version of the patriarchal fear of Nature--where say the Medieval church would warn against the 'Devil', the 'Prince of the World', and persecute many --especially women-- for 'communing' with Nature, in Eastern ways such 'dabbling' is accused as being caught in 'illusion' or 'delusion' again......a few months back, i joined a site called Infidels Forums. in the non-Abrahamic forums there were a contingent of Buddhists. a good cross section of them, form Zennists, Tibetan, different schools......ok. I challenge there beliefs and get attacked. but its when i mention hallucinogenic experience is where the true hostility began. to the abuse of actually being called brain damaged from several of them, and some confusing hallucinogens with hard drugs, etc. so, i am saying that such behaviour well illustrates what i am presenting to you concerning the metaphysics of Eastern thought......!

So this is why i encourage you to look PRE-all that. look at Goddess EARTH religious mythology. Admittedly this isn't that easy as so much of it has been ferociously suppressed over millennia, but one can still see its Deeper Song. Especially since its origins are PRE-literate and thus image-based. For example, the patriarchal Hebrew creation myth. The TEXT is derogatory to the Female, Nature, Sex, etc.......but the IMAGES tell a different story. There we have the much more ancient visual associative-poetical metaphors of, Garden, Tree, Serpent, Fruit, Goddess, Lover of the Goddess...and so on. all which become subverted by the patriarchal story propaganderists......for we know that the Tree is BOTH the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil AND The Tree of Life, and see what 'God' / patriarchal-authority does to the Tree of Life and its hallucinogenic fruits, it BARS it from humanity..........fast forward to now, and what do we notice??....the very SAME. the patriarchal War on Drugs!...SOME drugs mind. NOT emotional dilapidating drugs pushed by the pharmaceutical-psychiatric-government alliance (read, Shamanism and the Drug Propaganda: Patriarchy and the Drug War, by Dan Russell ISBN: 0-9650253-1-4)...YES THIS TABOO still persists. and for a reason. for the maintenance of the patriarchal mindset demands mind CONTROL. not us celebrating Nature ....we ARE Nature.
Look forward your response, and am VERY happy to have met you ..... Julian ONeill

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Hello Julian,

How am I meant to reply to such a letter!? Boy what a polemic. Will read some of your references - sound interesting and relevant. My brief answer to all this is that both the One and the Many are important. That it has been destructive to be caught up in either too much (they are united) and very destructive to science / metaphysics to believe that we can never unite the two. So the real answer is that we need to understand physical reality to understand ourselves and our intimate connection to nature / all other matter in universe. Then we would live very differently, would certainly not destroy Nature (our larger self) as we currently do.

I have not used hallucinogenic drugs. But I have read a bit on them (we have a page on drugs) and there seems to be this fairly common experience of realising this unity and wave structure of reality. Will probably try mushrooms and LSD at some stage. (I am a bit obsessive and fear drug addiction!) I am a philosopher. I don't prejudice against drug use, I care about the truth of what people have to say. This generally requires study of physics philosophy and metaphysics, probably a bit of drug use along the way would help to rise above our naive real sense of the world as discrete and separate objects (which is how our minds have evolved as it is useful for survival in our ancestry). And I agree, pharmaceutical companies are some of the worst drug peddlers on planet, cause untold harm (some good). Does this reply help at all? I do hope that you will read more on the Wave Structure of Matter, apply your mind to this knowledge. It has a lot to offer the world and its people I think (since i believe it is true).

We also have a page on Art (gets several thousand page views a day, so need to do more things with it). I agree, a lot of modern art is crap, just people trying to be different / novel, rather than actual skillful creative artists. Geoff

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Hi Geoff,

I enjoyed your reply. it is interesting you saying you haven't partaken of hallucinogens yet. i would have assumed you had--especially after seeing a photo of you online with long hair an all...hehe. i'll have more to say about all of that below

In the bit i read at your site you'll said: "To realize that the world we experience (our senses, which are a representation of the mind) are incomplete and deceptive"

This reminded me of this profound insight, by Alan Watts: " Considered as a collection of separate things, the world is thus a creation of thought. Maya, or measuring and classifying, is an operation of the mind, and as such is the "mother" (mata) of a strictly abstract conception of nature, illusory in the sense that nature is so divided only in one's mind. Maya is illusory in an evil sense only when the vision of the world as divided is not subordinate to the vision of the world as undivided, when, in other words, the cleverness of the measuring mind does not become too much of a good thing and is "unable to see the forest for the trees." But the general trend of Indian thought was to fall into the very trap which it should have avoided: it confused the abstract world of 'maya' with the concrete world of nature, of direct experience, and then sought liberation from nature in terms of a state of consciousness bereft of all sense experience. It interpreted 'maya' as an illusion of the senses rather than of thought projecting itself through the senses. In various forms of yoga it cultivated prolonged exclusive concentration upon a single point-'avidya!'-in order to exclude sense experience from consciousness, regarding it as the supreme obstacle to spiritual insight. Above all, sense experience implied "woman", not only as a highly attractive experience, but also as the "source" of birth into the natural world, and thus the very incarnation of 'maya', the Cosmic Seductress. Thus the identification of 'maya' with nature and with woman is the classic example of deception by 'maya', of confusing the world projected by the mind with the real world. Yet although 'maya' is figuratively the "mother" of the projected world, projection is rather a male function than a female. as usual, however, man projects his seed into the woman and then accuses her of seducing him. As Adam said. "This woman whom thou gavest me, she tempted me and I did eat." It was in this way that much of Indian philosophy became in practice the archetype of all world~denying dualisms, and in seeking liberation from sense experience became twice over the victim of 'maya'. For in struggling for release from 'maya' as the concrete world of nature, it confirmed itself more and more deeply in the very illusion that what our minds project upon the world is what we actually see. It forgot that the senses are innocent........((Nature, Man and Woman, by Alan Watts, pages 151-153)

Actually the real meaning of 'Maya' means 'magic creative power'....which is the phenomenal world in all its dynamic evolutionary potential and multidimensionality As i explained to you in last post, the crap i have had thrown at me by adherents to Eastern religions, and also the taboo against hallucinogens in Much of Hinduism and Buddhism, comes straight from this fear of co-creative exploration with Nature, and sensuality. a fear of being 'engulfed' which i glean is a particularly patriarchal fear

regarding 'space'...this is interesting: " The Way of the Medicine Whell is one of valuing, visioning, thinking and acting in the manner of a completion of the 'circle', rather than following the 'linear' mode. The great feminine principle is Space (Rhea, the ancient Greek Titaness, whose name means 'flow' or rhythm). The great masculine principle is Time (the Titan Chronus, husband of Rhea, whose name means 'time' eg., 'chron'ology; 'chron'ometer). Industrial cultures currently applaud linear over cyclic. Thus space becomes something to be filled (although of course it is already 'full'); and the creation of space, as in meditation, reverie, artistic creation and so forth, is seen as unorthodox; fantasy as opposed to reality." ((Fruits of the Moon Tree: The Medicine Wheel & Transpersonal Psychology, by Alan Bleakley, p.6)

I first had LSD experience when i was 15. it wasn't planned, some people had handed me this tiny tiny half a blue tab. i assumed it was some form of speed (though i'd never taken speed, i'd heard of 'blueys'...and we were on the way to a party)...i popped it. you hardly knew it was so incredibly tiny you couldn't feel it even on your tongue

Needless to say the experience was profound. I can say that from the brutal acculturation of school etc that had wastelanded my love of Nature, i regained this lost vastness it with profound AWE with WONDERFULL LSD! When inside, i could see rooms breathe, walls ripple. the movement of matter totally fascinated me. and i could see behind social masks accompanied with hysterical giggling

I discovered about Libery Caps/ Magic Mushrooms many years later.

Amazing.......very powerful, awe inspiring. they seem to emphasize the visual centres more..........one really cannot explain about hallucinogenic experience it is soooo...errrrr un-explainable. i just urge you to acquaint yourself with their mythological history which is primordial. for example, that site i forwarded about From Orphism to Gnosticism.....? understand that the originally Dionysian Earth religion very much embraced hallucinogens. Their mythology was Goddess and her son/lover.....being pre-literate is is richly poetically associative, so 'son' -in this case, Dionysus ('the god of many names') etc., has many meanings.......a central one is the very Fruit itself, the phallic mushrooms which springs from the bowels of Mother Earth. The term for what they felt after ingesting the sacrament, was 'enthusiasm' which is also translated as 'possession'....eg., possession by the god/mushroom/Dionysos....and this god of many names includes god of Nature, or Theatre, of Masks, and is also called the Loosener and Liber, where we get 'liberation'...etc. So as you can see, all of that is implied

the reason i go into all this, is cause i a love to, btu also from my experience talking to people who have had hallucinogens--at various forums--who haven't a clue of their ancient past, and naively imagine it all began with the Hippies!...also some have this nonchalant attitude to them....you know how our cultural mass media spin commodifies EVERYthing. well this rubs off on the youth. for instance at this forum the Lycaeum, which devotes itself to hallucinogenic issues, some youngens there use the term 'get fuked up' when speaking about it.....All i can do is try and support a mire mature intelligent approach

It is not us sat down waiting for these sacraments to 'do their stuff'...like TV etc. it is a meeting!....and if this meeting is deeply respected ...all is deeply enriched

as for your addiction worries. please do NOT worry. in fact from what i have learnt entirely the contrary is true. that in cultures that have respected this relationship, between us and the ecstatic dimension inspired by hallucinogens, 'addiction' is Very rare indeed. in fact our cultural problems are entirely brought about because of the oppression against our natural freedom for ecstatic expression

please try and checkout (http://www.erowid.com)

go to its 'what new' and see the Trip reports...you can find some very interesting ones that try to convey hard to explain experiences

Julian ONeill