towards proper worship

Greetings to all.
I am happy to enter into the symposium of this establishment and to carry the honor that my Lord has kept for me, and that I have kept for my lord, before your eyes.
I am a resident of this planet, swirling in the outer rings of this galaxy, from nowhere to nowhere where it will never arive, always in the eternal present. I have learned things, forgotten much, remembered some, and am here to share what I have remembered in order to be reminded of what I have forgotten; I am here, as I am everywhere where I am, to sow and to reap.
About most things I am in doubt, but I know certain things for certain. The greatest of these connot be conveyed in prose, and as I am no poet, they will remain with me in my heart. But the most alerting of truths can be shared with ease, because it is as base a truth as truths come:
Our world is suffering as she should not suffer, and all of us men with the power to discern, bear in part the terrible responsibility for truths to grim to contemplate. And our Lord who looks to all his children with the kindest love at the same time judges all those who violate His body with the uncompromising sword of justice.
If the world dies, we perish with it. The world’s agony shall be our torture. Inversely, the worlds healing shall be our redemption. So teaches the law of cause and effect, also known as karma

I am here to work on my karma. I am here to clarify my purposes to myself, in the hope of cooperation from strong ad virile souldiers who take the destiny of the world in their hands or on their shouders and who fear neither pain nor death.
For pain and death are two certainties without which life cannot exist, and he who seeks to avoid them is like poison to the Earth.Here I come at my first conjecture, so far all I have said I kow to be certain, but this is a venture; desire for painlessness causes the Earth and it’s people to perish. It is so because pain is a fact of life.
Deisre for painlessness is a virtue of many modern philosophies, especially the lustful ones of modernity. Where did this virtue come from? When did man begin to scorn pain? I find myself in a most difficult situation, wanting to overcome my weaknesses. This is the reason I have come here to seek counsel. I am here in the hope that there are wise people who have learned to live with the realities of the world, and who are generous with their wisdom. I am an aspirant. I seek to learn from masterful natures who know of dicipline.

Thanks.
abhi-pratapta

Hi abhi-pratapta,
It is not exactly clear to me what you are here to learn. I’m not exacty a grealty diciplined individual most of the time but if you would specify what you would like to find out, I would be glad to share some of what I think I know in exchange for some of your knowledge.
I like the quote in your signature. Is that Mahavatar Babaji the same Babaji as the one who taught Lahiri Mahasaya? If so, do you believe that this man is immortal? I have followed the teachings of Paramanhansa Yogananda for a couple of years, but have never been initiated into Krya Yoga. Do you do that kind of practice?

Hello Jakob,
Than you for your reaction. I will first answer your direct questions about Mahavatar Babaji.
-Yes, as far as tradition is kind to enlighten me, I can say that he was the teacher of the great Lahiri Mahasaya.
-No, I do not believe he is immortal. I have heard the stories about his extremely high age, but I prefer not to have an opinion about that. I have received teachings from this Guru for which I am most grateful and by which I am humbed, and I have no need or right to speculate about the personal issues of his life.
-No, I do not practice Krya Yoga in the way that Paramahansa Yogananda taught it. The only Yoga I practice is Karma-Yoga. This means that I live my life in the most active way that I can manage. I find that breath-excersise, unless they are done under the strict supervision of an elightened teacher, are very dangerous to the health, and result in most cases in sloth and addiction to pleasure. I would say that you are fortunate not to have been initiated.

To answer your first inquiry a counter-question: How can one be sure what it is one wants ot learn before one has learned it?
I am here in the hope of engaging in discussion with strong and original minds. I have, so far, no read anything by your hand, so I would not know if we can be of interest to each other. If you are interested in sharing views with me, perhaps you would be so kind to refer me to one of your posts which represents well a portion of your body of thought of which you think it could be a fertile ingredient for a conversation with me?

Greetings,
abhi-pratapta

Welcome Abhi,

“How can one be sure what it is one wants ot learn before one has learned it?” -Abhi

Easy, I am sure that I want to learn more about you. I want to learn things I do not know about you. I am sure I want to learn things about you that I do not yet know.

You can be sure that you want to learn something on this forum because you have asked to learn about things you have not learned yet.

Thank you Bdhanes. This is a very fine message board. I am delighted to find all kinds of things to my interest here.
Yes, certainly you are correct in seeing that I know that I want to learn. But I think that the intention to learn does not tell us much about what I will learn. Let me try to illustrate this with an example.
I could, for instance, have gotten here by accident, when I was looking for an interesting place on the net to learn about western philosophy. To make sense of this reply to you I have to mention that I cherish a love for botany. It is possible that on this extensively well maintained forum I would meet someone with whom I got into a correspondence about something as deviating to western philosophy as, for instance, the different healing properties of the flowers from the Indus Valley, and the different fluids which can be used for medicin. This person might tell me something about a certain kind of mixture of powders, which are made from the leaves of the plants that grow these flowers, which are excellent to soothe a certain kind of infection. In this hypothetical case, I would have harvested a bit of learning of herbal medicin, instead of from the subjects in which I was investing my energies in. Nevertheless, I might be very happy to have learned this, if, for example, I or anyone I know and care for was infected with the infection. I thought I was sure I wanted to learn western philosophy - but, indeed, I was more eager to learn about medicin!

I hope this little fiction suffices to illustrate that what I claimed is at least not nonsense!

happy wishes,
abhi-pratapta

I agree that the intention to learn certainly does not tell us everything we are going to learn. Then we would have nothing to learn! However, intention to learn does set us in the right direction to learn on the subject in which we are intending. I think you will learn about western philosophy on this forum. And who knows… you might end up learning about herbal medicine too!

I appreciate the flair and uniqueness of your writing. Please continue to post on the forum because we need more diversity on this forum. It is saturated with us westerners!

Abhi-pratapta, your response is very interesting to me. I have done a lot of yoga, chi gung, practice involving breath-excersizes, and can agree with you that it does involve a health risk. I will not go into details but I have suffered some damage from excessive surrender to the flows of my energies. It may be a bit forward to ask, but do you have some advice on how to control these flows, and dependence on them, once they are imbedded in daily consciousness?

I doubt I can teach you anything, but perhaps you can teach me something, by shedding your light on some of the more experimental exponents of my thoughts. There are two threads in which I have dealt with what has been holding me back in philosophy since I started my transcendental practices - the question of the nature of inspiration. I have tried to lay a groundwork for this discussion in the following threads:

ilovephilosophy.com/phpbb/vi … p?t=152263
and written a post suggesting it here:
ilovephilosophy.com/phpbb/vi … p?t=153906

Of course I do not expect that you immediately respond. But since you asked, these are the threads that contain some of the thoughts I am interested in myself. Also, I have written some replies in DEB’s thread Life: a reaction to the void that may be of interest to you. Or not, of course.

Only decadents want to live without pain. They want “only pleasure”; but without pain, what remains is not pleasure but painlessness.

“[P]leasure counts as being more primeval than pain: pain only as conditioned, as a consequence of the will to pleasure (of the will to become, grow, shape, i.e., to create: in creation, however, destruction is included). A highest state of affirmation of existence is conceived from which the highest degree of pain cannot be excluded: the tragic-Dionysian state.”
[Nietzsche, The Will to Power, section 853.]

But why should a healthy man seek to eliminate pain? Again, Nietzsche has the answer:

“Man, the bravest of animals and the one most accustomed to suffering, does not repudiate suffering as such; he desires it, he even seeks it out, provided he is shown a meaning for it, a purpose of suffering. The meaninglessness of suffering, not suffering itself, was the curse that lay over mankind so far”.
[Genealogy of Morals, III, 28.]

So what we need is a meaning of suffering - a meaning of life (for, as Buddha says, “to live is to suffer”). Now Nietzsche continues:

“The meaninglessness of suffering, not suffering itself, was the curse that lay over mankind so far—and the ascetic ideal offered man meaning! It was the only meaning offered so far”.
[ibid.]

But the ascetic ideal was a negative ideal - an antinatural ideal (the ideal of “sainthood”, of “pure spirit”, of incorporeality (like an angel)). Schopenhauer’s ideal was the ascetic ideal: he also regarded “incorporeality” as the meaning of life: namely, death. Death, according to him, was the goal and the meaning of life.

But Nietzsche turned against Schopenhauer; more precisely, he turned against the ascetic ideal:

“I also [as well as other things] want to make asceticism natural [as opposed to antinatural] again: in place of the aim of denial, the aim of strengthening; a gymnastics of the will [the original meaning of the Greek askesis is “exercise”]”.
[The Will to Power, section 915.]

I have now arrived at the point where I should introduce Daniel Conway’s essay, “Love’s labor’s lost: the philosopher’s Versucherkunst [art of experimentation and seduction]”, from the bundle “Nietzsche, philosophy and the arts” (Cambridge 1998).

“It is the business of politics, Nietzsche believes, to oversee the production of those rare, exotic individuals who, by virtue of their übermenschlich [superhuman] beauty, excite in others the stirrings of erôs. Indeed, the production of such individuals is coextensive with the production of culture itself.”

However, these individuals are not negative ascetics, although negative ascetics are often mistaken for such individuals:

“Ascetics awaken the erôs of others precisely insofar as they (appear to) squander themselves, for they are (believed to be) possessed of a strength of will that affords them the capacity to swallow even mortal doses of suffering. […]
Of course, not all ascetic disciplines are capable of arousing erôs, for not all ascetics are genuine squanderers. For those ascetics who cannot afford the requisite expenditure of excess affect, disciplines of self-denial engender a sacrifice rather than a squandering. It is not uncommon, moreover, for a sacrifice to be mistaken for a squandering; most martyrs are portrayed not as decadents desperately embracing the “will to nothingness,” but as heroes who spend themselves in the tragic service of noble ideals. […] Socrates beguiled the youth of Athens because he appeared to master himself, subjecting his monstrous appetites to the cold, arresting glare of hyper-rationality. […]
According to Nietzsche, however, the erotic charm of Socrates is attributable to a grand misunderstanding. Socrates was no squanderer, and he died not so much to honor noble ideals as to surrender to his consuming decadence. […] Other martyrs, including Jesus, have had a similarly erotic - and similarly disastrous - influence on their witnesses, for they too have been mistaken for squanderers […]. The psychological genius of St. Paul lay in his political appropriation of Christ as a martyr, in order that he might exploit the erotogenic [erôs-arousing] possibilities engendered by the unjust death of a Savior (AC 42).”

This common mistake is taken into consideration by Nietzsche when he writes:

“It is my good fortune that after whole millennia of error and confusion I have rediscovered the way that leads to a Yes and a No.
I teach the No to all that makes weak - that exhausts.
I teach the Yes to all that strengthens, that stores up strength, that justifies the feeling of strength.”
[The Will to Power, section 54, with my emphasis.]

This way is Nietzsche way’s out of the labyrinth:

“We have discovered happiness, we know the way, we have found the exit out of the labyrinth of thousands of years.”
[The Antichristian, section 1.]

The exit is found by pursuing Ariadne’s thread by the light of her crown:

"Dionysos converts [Ariadne] into a crown, the very same crown that he gave her when he arrived. The crown, the symbol of necessity, a sign of perfection, is a circle of seduction. To seduce also means to destroy, phtheriein. It is the perfection of deceit that circles in on itself, a perfection with an inherent deceit.

“Theseus too had given her a crown obtained from Poseidon when he arrived in Crete, and she gave Theseus a crown of Dionysos. The gestures of man and god repeat each other. Of course, Ariadne betrays the god when she helps Theseus kill the Minotaur, the crown giving off the light that Theseus needed to negotiate the very dark passages of the labyrinth. Ariadne betrays the god and gives his gift to the lover who replaces him. Ariadne is deceived, beause she deceived. The crown is the same crown, over and over again.”
[Kalev Pehme, Note on BG&E, graph 15, with my emphasis.]

Seduction - the philosopher’s Versucherkunst - and perfection are intimately related:

“It is the fundamental idea of culture, insofar as it sets for each one of us but one task: to promote the production of the philosopher, the artist, and the saint within us and without us and thereby to work at the perfecting of Nature”.
[Nietzsche, Schopenhauer as Educator, section 5, as quoted by Conway, ibid.]

"As [Nietzsche] explains in a remarkable note written in the spring of 1888, the excitation of erôs transfigures the lover, elevating him - if only temporarily - to the lofty station of his beloved:

[size=92]The lover becomes a squanderer [Verschwender]: he is rich enough for it. Now he dares, becomes an adventurer, becomes an ass in magnanimity and innocence; he believes in God again, he believes in virtue, because he believes in love; and on the other hand, this happy idiot grows wings and new capabilities, and even the door of art is opened to him.[/size]

[…] The sublime illusions produced in the lover by erôs thus enable nomos (or human design) to perfect and complete physis [nature]. Only when engulfed in the madness of erôs would human beings ever attempt to overcome or transcend their natural limitations."
[Conway, ibid.]

Love and hate are two sides of the same coin. Thus Jewel Kilcher sings:

“Hitler loved little blue-eyed boys
And it drove him to hate”
[Jewel, Innocence Maintained.]

Note the order in which she mentions the two facts. This is the same order Nietzsche discerns in the noble man’s appraisal of values:

“[T]he noble man […] conceives the basic concept “good” in advance and spontaneously out of himself and only then creates for himself an idea of “bad”!”
[Genealogy of Morals, I, 11.]

It is from this rank-ordering of good and bad that the pathos of distance derives; and

“Without that pathos of distance which grows out of the ingrained difference between strata […] the other, more mysterious pathos could not have grown up either—the craving for an ever new widening of distances within the soul itself, the development of ever higher, rare, more remote, further-stretching, more comprehensive states—in brief, simply the enhancement of the type “man,” the continual “self-overcoming of man,” to use a moral formula in a supra-moral sense.”
[Beyond Good and Evil, 257.]

Love of the good is necessarily complemented by hatred (odium) of the bad. Jung, who derived his concept of the Self from Nietzsche, describes this as follows:

“Eros was united with his Beloved inside the Great Orphic, Cosmic Egg: Phanes, Erika Paios. Eros unites, but Phobos, fear, hatred (nothing is closer to love than hatred) disunites, leads to separation, breaks the Cosmic Egg. So as to acquire consciousness, individuality, so as to be able one day to give a face to the Cosmic Egg.
Complete fusion - losing oneself in one’s opposite, in the loved one, in an effort to return to the original Androgynous - is not a good thing. It goes against Individuation, the immortality of the persona and resurrection, which is differentiation, the individuation of both partners, so that he and she can come together again separated but, in another way, united for ever. Resurrected. […] Parsifal and Alexander had to employ Phobos (Hatred) in order to escape from the Great Mother, the little widow, so as to achieve the Grail, the Stone of Change, which the Greeks called Xoanon. Totality.
Das ewig Weibliche zieht uns hinan,’ as Goethe said. “The Eternal Feminine leads us to heaven.” Because the impulse which drives you to fulfil the ultimate mystery, which I have called Individuation, projecting the “ego” into the Persona, into the Monad, into the Self, giving a face to the Gods, “lighting the darkness of the Creator”, is none other than love. Only love can make you cross the deep chasm, the drawbridge that separates your “ego” from the castle in which your beloved lies asleep, jumping into the abyss. It is in effect a change, a miracle. It is a Non-Existent Flower: the Self. Fall into this flower and you will find the face of your Beloved there. This love, this impulse, is an icy, red-green fire, which consumes everything and projects you to heaven, loving beyond life and death, for all eternity. This love makes you immortal. This face, this Fire of Love, which the troubadours and Minnesanger called Woevre Saelde, Isolde, I have called Anima in the man and Animus in the woman.”
[Miguel Serrano, NOS, Anima, Animus.]

Now most men and women project this face on each other; thus a man thinks he has found his ideal woman, marries her, and impregnates her; and indeed, his children will thereby, if they are well-developed at least, resemble his ideal more closely than he himself does.

“The sexes deceive themselves about one another: the reason being that fundamentally they love and honor only themselves (or their own ideal, to express it more pleasantly—).”
[Nietzsche, BGE 131.]

Such a man wants his woman to have a boy by him which is to be his reincarnation. This is one of the only two kinds of reincarnation that I believe in - the other being “spiritual” reincarnation (thus I regard the one who calls himself William Nietzsche a spiritual heir of Friedrich Nietzsche). In both instances, the “reincarnation” is the becoming flesh (again) of the information - either genetic or intellectual - transmitted by the “parent”. I do not believe in ghosts (“souls”).

But I digress. The erôs aroused by the gulf that separates the exemplary human being from all others drives (some of) these others to attempt to bridge that gulf. And they are aided in this enterprise by erôs, love, because in love one is “more valuable, is stronger. In animals this condition produces new weapons, pigments, colors, and forms; above all, new movements, new rhythms, new love calls and seductions. It is no different with man. His whole economy is richer than before, more powerful, more complete than in those who do not love.” [Nietzsche, The Will to Power, section 808.]

Sexual love may drive a human being to attempt to “create a higher body” [Zarathustra, Of Child and Marriage] in his offspring:

“Marriage: so call I the will of the twain to create the one that is more than those who created it. The reverence for one another, as those exercising such a will, call I marriage.”
[Zarathustra, ibid.]

But this is a kind of seeking salvation in an “afterlife”, in a life after this one - in the life of one’s offspring. But the highest human beings want to attain “salvation” (wholeness) in this life: “What’s the point of offspring to the man whose soul is the world?” [Genealogy III, 8.]

Thus the Indian caste system is aimed at being reborn in a higher caste, ultimately as a Brahmana, and then transcending even the level of the Brahmana:

“[O]nly a man who transcends the limited knowledge of a brahmana and reaches the knowledge of the Supreme Personality of Godhead, Lord Sri Krsna, becomes a person in Krsna consciousness–or, in other words, a Vaisnava.”
[The Bhagavad Gita As It Is, 4.13, purport.]

This means to transcend not only the spheres of the Sudra, the Vaisya, and the Kshatriya - the sephiroth Malkuth, Yesod (Hod and Netzach), and Tiphareth (Geburah and Chesed) on the Kaballistic Tree of Life -, but even rise above Daath, the sphere of the Brahmana. It is to reach the level of the Supernals.

But Swami Prabhupada is wrong in calling such a man (only) a Vaishnava (follower of Vishnu). For such a man can also be a Saivite (follower of Siva). For both Siva and Vishnu are gods of the totality:

“The dialectic of transgressive sacrality provides us with fresh insights into the complex structural transformation of the Vedic dualistic universe dominated by the opposition between the deva Indra and the asura (Mitra‑) Varuna into the subsequent Hindu trinity of Brahmâ, Vishnu and Rudra, each of whom is in his own way a ‘god of the Totality.’ […] Though each of the Hindu trinity occupies only one face of the triangular Vedic structure, they are all equally entitled to be gods of the totality only by symbolically incorporating the opposing apex of the triangle and thereby revealing the dialectical movement of their interlocking identities. Thus Rudra finds his purified counterpart in the ascetic and ‘auspicious’ Shiva, and Arjuna’s very name ‘Bîbhatsu’ identifies him not only with the ‘Brahman’ Ajâtashatru but also with the ‘white’ foe-less Mitra ‘disgusted’ at the thought of doing violence to Vrtra. Vishnu, like Arjuna, finds his ‘black’ Varunic counterpart in the name Krishna he assumes in the Mahâbhârata; and Brahmâ becomes profanized in the figure of the royal purohita projected as the martial Drona, or even the Brahmanized warrior Bhîshma-Pitâmaha (see n.50).”
[Elizabeth Chalier-Visuvalingam, Mitra-Varuna and the niravasita-Bhairava: The Royal Mahâbrâhmana.]

Hello Jakob,
I am sorry that you have suffered damage as a result of your practices. It is regrettable that dedication to a good cause may sometimes cause harm. But perhaps this is a lesson you will be able to learn from it!
I have no specifict advise for you, but I do dare to say that the greatest help you can give yourself when you are too much occupied with your own energies, is to do good work for others, and to direct your attention away from yourself. I wish you all the best with this!

I have browed through the first correspondence and find it, in fact, quite facinating, but predeominantly confusing. You are aparently quite knowledgeable in the field of the Kaballistic Tree of Life, which is a subject I am completely ignorant of. But since Sauwelios also mentions it in this correspondence, I am growing curious about it.
I am not, however, currently in a stage where I can be of any help to you, I am afraid. I do not nearly understand well enough what it is you would like to learn! But when I have the time I will read your correspondence more thoroughy, and I will try to respond.
I wish you good luck with your energies,

abhi-pratapta

Hello, Sauwelios,
I have read both of your postings beginning with facination, and have arrived, via confusion, at a feeling I can not describe. Perhaps it is this Eros you speak of. I am not in the intellectual position to reply here to most of what you have written, but there is one element which has settled neatly in a niche of my mind that was vancant; the difference between sacrifice and squandering.
You have made it clear that squandering is higher than sacrifice. I have pondered this, and think now that the reason for this is the quantity of energy involved in the act, and especially in realtion to the quantity of energy in the actor of the act.
Something is squandereing if one can afford it, something is a sacrifice if one can’t.
When we go to war, there are two ways; prepared to sacrifice onself, and prepared to squander oneself.
Squandering does not need justification, one goes to war in order to kill and die. But death is sacrifice if there is a purpose beyond the loss of life or energy.

I constructed this table:

High energy / Low energy
Squandering / Sacrifice
Goal in itself / Goal beyond itself
Seduces / Does not seduce

which enabled me to build the following construction:

There are different Gods, but one crown. Only a man can wear the crown at all times; a man has the diadvantage inaopposition to Gods that he is mortal and weak, but he has the advantage in opposition of them that when he is strong, he can be any God of his choosing. Therefore, all Gods try to seduce all the strong men. This is Eros, luring a strong man aross the around his mortality, to be posessed by a who God eager to be alive.

This leads me to what you have said about totality, and the Three Gods of the Trinity. I can now explain why I do not agree with you that al of the three, Brahma, Vishnu and Shiva, are in themselve totalities.
The God who possesses man is Shiva. He is the goal of Brahma, who is the root of everything, and at the root of all things in themselves, even a tthe root of the root. Beyond this root is again Shiva.
But as the action of shiva becomes the root of Brahma, Vishnu is that which is caused by the root and causes the action. Brahma is always God and cannot be embodied by mortality; The Brahmin teach of Brahma, not of themselves. Shiva can only be embodied by mortality: he is the warrior, the actor; any strong man who teaches himself to the world. But Vishnu is both mortal and immortal, and Krishna is the World, which is teaching itself.

I wish I had the time and energy to reread your second post and comment on it, but I have expended what I had to spend. And as I do not want not sacrifice myself, I will end this posting while I still enjoy writing it.

I wish you a good night,
abhi-pratapta.

Last night I wrote a reply. However, I went beyond the point at which you so wisely halted, and started sacrificing myself. I was then confronted with the following problem. I could post the whole thing, but then my sacrifice might be mistaken for a squandering (and you might have to sacrifice yourself to read the whole thing at once), whereas, if I only posted it up to the point I mentioned, one might think I, too, had stopped at the right time, which would be a sign of strength. So I refrained from posting anything altogether, and present you now with the two parts of my reply. The first is the following.

Dear abhi-pratapta. Thank you for your insightful reading. It is quite uncommon that people read my posts profoundly and comment on it.

You say:

I agree with roughly the first half of this passage and disagree with the other. You have understood the difference between squandering and sacrificing oneself. But I don’t see why you tie squandering to fighting for the fight’s sake and sacrificing to fighting for a cause. I do agree that sacrificing and fighting for the fight’s sake do not go together; however, I do think one can squander oneself in one’s fight for a cause, even as one can sacrifice oneself for it; the former is good, the latter, bad.

So I agree with the first two polarities of your table, but not with the third; and I do certainly not agree with the fourth. As Conway writes:

“It is not uncommon […] for a sacrifice to be mistaken for a squandering; most martyrs are portrayed not as decadents desperately embracing the “will to nothingness,” but as heroes who spend themselves in the tragic service of noble ideals.”

Here we see that a sacrifice can arouse eros in others if it is mistaken for a squandering. We also see that Conway distinguishes decadents desperately embracing the “will to nothingness” from heroes who spend themselves in the tragic service of noble ideals. Those who strive for Supermanhood are such heroes:

“The teaching mêden agan [nothing in excess] applies to men of overflowing strength - not to the mediocre. The enkrateia [temperance] and askêsis is only a stage toward the heights: the “golden nature” is higher.
[…]
Higher than “thou shalt” is “I will” (the heroes); higher than “I will” stands: “I am” (the gods of the Greeks).
The barbarian gods express nothing of the pleasure of restraint - are neither simple nor frivolous nor moderate.”
[Nietzsche, The Will to Power, section 940.]

Note Nietzsche’s use of the word “askêsis”! It is, in the positive sense (as natural ascesis) a stage toward the heights. Thus the hero tempers his overflowing strength: this is his squandering:

“here [in the ascetic life] an attempt [Versuch] is made to employ force to block up the wells of force.”
[Nietzsche, Genealogy of Morals, III, 11.]

“In order to experiment on themselves, philosophers must gather and discharge excess stores of expendable affect. [Nietzsche] describes the great human being as a “calamity,” and he likens the effects of self-overcoming to a river overflowing its banks and flooding the surrounding countryside (TI “Expeditions of an Untimely Man” 44).”
[Conway, ibid.]

Thus the askêsis of the hero consists in using the excess “water” (force) for embanking the river that he is. In the case of a Socrates, people only see the banks, and guess that the stream, which they cannot see, is broad - whereas it is thin and almost dried up. All the force that he has is employed in building banks.

Now for a slight digression. This is the reason that I included Nietzsche’s concluding comment on the barbarian gods.

“[T]o the Vikings to die a natural death [which is the Christian Secular ideal of dying in one’s sleep common today] was dishonourable; they called this a ‘Straw Death’ [as beds were made out of straw].
The Viking MUST meet his death in Battle BECAUSE ONLY THEN COULD HE GO TO VALHALLA!”
[William Nietzsche, Suicide and Death.]

The same went for the Japanese nobility. And Nietzsche does indeed say:

“Ye say it is the good cause which halloweth even war? I say unto you: it is the good war which halloweth every cause.”
[Zarathustra, Of War and Warriors.]

And yet Nietzsche is concerned with overcoming man! That is his cause, the Superman is his goal, and his struggle is aimed at attaining that goal! So how can we resolve this paradox?

“What is great in man is that he is a bridge and not a goal: what is lovable in man is that he is an over-going and a down-going.
I love those that know not how to live except as down-goers, for they are the over-goers.”
[Zarathustra’s Prologue, 4.]

Likewise, the Kaballist Crowley says, in the last of his Little Essays toward Truth:

"Truth is our Path, and Truth is our Goal; ay! there shall come to all a moment of great Light when the Path is seen to be itself the Goal; and in that hour every one of us shall exclaim:

“I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life!”"
[Little Essay on Truth.]

This is because, in war or, more precisely, in destruction, one is one with the universe:

"My first solution: Dionysian wisdom. Joy in the destruction of the most noble and at the sight of progressive ruin: in reality joy in what is coming and lies in the future, which triumphs over existing things, however good. Dionysian: temporary identification with the principle of life (including the voluptuousness of the martyr).
My innovations. - Further development of pessimism: intellectual pessimism; critique of morality, disintegration of the last consolation. Knowledge of the signs of decay: veils with illusion every firm action; culture [as opposed to civilisation]] isolates, is unjust and therefore strong.

  1. My endeavor to oppose decay and increasing weakness of personality. I sought a new center.
  2. Impossibility of this endeavor recognized.
  3. Thereupon I advanced further down the road of disintegration - where I found new sources of strength for individuals. We have to be destroyers! – I perceived that the state of disintegration, in which individual natures can perfect themselves as never before – is an image and isolated example of existence in general. To the paralyzing sense of general disintegration and incompleteness I opposed the eternal recurrence."
    [The Will to Power, section 417, entire, with added emphasis.]

This “digression” has proven extremely useful. Here we have everything together: the (self-)destruction of the heroes; looking forward to the future (the Superman); martyrdom; the pessimism of strength (active nihilism); the destruction of (life-negating) morality; the need for the stupidity of culture (e.g., nationalism). Also, the idea of the eternal recurrence is the projection into the metaphysical of the idea that the path is itself the goal:

“this, my Dionysian world of the eternally self-creating, the eternally self-destroying, this mystery world of the twofold voluptuous delight, my “beyond good and evil,” without goal, unless the joy of the circle is itself a goal; without will, unless a ring feels good will toward itself”.
[The Will to Power, section 1067.]

Now a ring is simply “ein Ring” in German; but ringen means “to agonise, to struggle, to wrestle”. And the ring, like the crown, is a symbol of perfection, a circle of seduction. And one might consider the following:

“‘Rang’ in German is from the same root as English ‘rank’. However, the latter lacks the immediate sense also of ‘ring’, ‘arena’, ‘circle’.
Both ‘ring’ and ‘rank’ derive from the Old High German ‘hring’, - ‘ring’, referring to the gold rings given out by warriorlords as gifts of distinction. Beowulf is called a ‘ring-giver’ for example.
I suspect that decorations of rank, medals etc., in the military derive from this - hence, ‘ring/rank’.”
[William Nietzsche, Order of Rank.]

Enough! or Too much.

P.S.: Note Crowley’s preoccupation with the Truth!

By the way, when I wrote that Swami Prabhupada was wrong, and that the man who has reached the Supernals can also be a Saivite, I was not really convinced. In fact, I think that Prabhupada was right. But then, I believe, he repeatedly asserts that Siva is the supreme devotee of Vishnu. I think this is as follows:

“There are three different paths to reach the Highest: the path of I, the path of Thou, and the path of Thou and I.
According to the first, all that is, was, or ever shall be is I, my higher Self. In other words, I am, I was, and I shall be for ever in Eternity.
According to the second, Thou art, O Lord, and all is Thine.
And according to the third, Thou art the Lord, and I am Thy servant, or Thy son.
In the perfection of any of these three ways, a man will find God.”
[Ramakrishna.]

I think the first path is the path of the Saivite, who identifies himself with his God, Siva. But then, having “become” Siva, he arrives at the second path, and this combination means he is Siva whose Lord is Vishnu (which is the third path). Likewise, a follower of Vishnu also arrives at the third path by way of the second (but skips the first path).

Mrs. Chalier-Visuvalingam, however, asserts the following:

“[F]rom the esoteric standpoint of transgressive sacrality, Vishnu himself recognizes Bhairava as the supreme divinity. Nevertheless, Bhairava himself is anxious to “keep up the appearances,” to maintain the distinction between what can be described as the exoteric and esoteric hierarchies, for he recognizes Vishnu’s supremacy in the socio-religious domain in exchange for the latter’s recognition of his own metaphysical and initiatic supremacy. The collusion between the two corresponds perfectly to the oft-repeated dictum of the Bhairavâgamas that one should be a (Bhairava-worshipping) ‘tantric’ (Kaula) within, a Shaiva without, a devotee of Vishnu (vaishnava) in the ‘public assembly’ (sabhâ), and an orthodox brahmin (vaidika) in everyday (ritual) life.”
[The apollonian Vishnu and the Dionysian Bhairava: Bhakti and Initiatic Hierarchies.]

I should now like to introduce you to my combination of the psychology of the three gunas and the “ground-plan” of the Kaballah, the Tree of Life:

http://www.tarotforum.net/showthread.php?t=34475

Other links of interest:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tree_of_Jiva_and_Atman
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atman_(Hinduism)#Miscellaneous
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anava

Hello Sauwelios,
Your riches are gratefully received, I would like you to be assured of that.
The past days I have, on several occasions, sat down and attempted to write a reply, but every time I was captured by several of the many facets of your postings, of which I saw that I had not thoroughly enough thought about to make a reply to it. Nevetheless, I will now follow this attempt through, regardless fo what may come of it.

First of all I would like you say that I see that it is true that sacrificing, too, can arouse attraction. But I do hold it for possible that this attraction is someting different from the Eros that is aroused by squandering.
You say that sacrifice can disguise itself as squandering. I have sought in my mind for examples of this, but could find none. Are there specific evets; battles orwars, or otherwise acts of spending energy, in history or myth which you consider to be sacrifice, but which are taken by audiences to be squandering?
Alongside of this wondering stands the question of whther or not squandering oneself in war is done for a purpose. I would say yes, indeed, no war is without a purpose, whether it is waged with vast superiority or with a chanceless minority. Never, or hardly ever, is animo found among soldiers for war when there is no end to be attained. But this end is taughjt to be only a mask for the real end; that of the joy of slaying or dying gloriously. I mention this as brusquely as I do beause you have mentioned Bhairava. I have been taught that Bhairava is the deity with whom warriors are united when they find themselves in the state of mind where they fear neither death, nor pain, but only desire to be part of the devouring universe, which is the most deadly, but also the most rewarding state of mind. It is this, also, which I think I recognize in the citation of Crowley.
When I read your postings I cannot escapte the impression that what I have been taught is not what you would consider to be a philosophical way of thinking. I do not understand what is meant by the term ‘transgressive sacrality’, therefore, I do not understand the form in which Bhairava takes on meaning in the text that you have quoted.
I would now like to comment on something I do think I understand quite well:

I do agree with the first part. Yes, the Saivite knows God by his own actions. When he is ambodied by the God Shiva, he is, in reality, a ruler, and a squanderer. Becuase no other God than Shiva has so much power over the energies of Brahma. He can do everything that he wants with the power of the divinity.
Vishnu, on the other hand, cannot be embodied by one man, because he is the world. Only a very great king can have a direct relation with Vishnu. Such a king takes on a new body: his tribe, nation, or the world becomes his body. What follows from this is that the king can not do everything he wants with his power, in other words, he cannot embody Shiva. He can in fact only be close to Vishnu, and do that which will maintain his power. If he chooses to become Shiva, he will have a short moment of greatness, but then, lose his power, and be destroyed.
But there is a third combination of Shiva and Vishnu. A man can not become a king who embodies a nation without having conquered it. And Shiva is the God who conquers, not Vishnu. This is because the man who embodies Shiva is recognized by the people as God, whereas only the man who is recognized as God can aquire the power of Vishnu.
I would like to add that Brahma is at the root of both Vishnu and Shiva.

Now I would like to come back to my wondering about Bhairava. In the text I have just written, I would place Bhairava where the king who is with vishnu decided to squander his power and become Shiva. I think this now, because of the following part of the text you have quoted:

If Vishnu is established in a man, in a king, and Visnu himself recognizes Bhairava as the supreme divinity, this is an explanation of why a king who rules the wolrd as Vishnu is tempted to become fearsome and destructive. It is also, in another way, understandable why the fearsome Bhairava would like to maintain Vishnu’s power. Because if this power is spent, Bhairava’s power is also spent.

I am left now, wondering whether it is the anima of the king who is with Vishnu which tempts him to become Bhairava. Or is this a misunderstanding of the anima? I hope I have not disappointed you.

I thank you for your teaching,

abhi-pratapta

Dear abhi-pratapta,

Your reply has certainly not disappointed.

Conway mentions Socrates and Jesus. I could go into that, but I’d rather talk about Vishnu and Bhairava!

Yes, that is what the Superman will ultimately do:

“[T]he strong races decimate one another: through war, thirst for power, adventurousness; the strong affects: wastefulness […].
They are races that squander.”
[Nietzsche, The Will to Power, section 864.]

Funny that you would associate Crowley with Bhairava. In that same essay, he says:

“[P]assing through the stage of the Black Dragon, in which your rational ideas are wholly destroyed and putrefied, you will succeed in enflaming them in the fierce Furnace of your Creative Wills, until all things burn up together into one blazing mass of living, of relentless Light.”
[Crowley, Little Essays, Truth.]

He then quotes the historical Zarathustra, who describes:

“A similar Fire flashingly extending through the rushings of Air, or a Fire formless whence cometh the Image of a Voice, or even a flashing Light abounding, revolving, whirling forth, crying aloud. Also there is the Vision of the fire-flashing Courser [a horse] of Light, or else a Child, borne aloft on the shoulders of the Celestial Steed, fiery, or clothed with gold, or naked, or shooting with the bow shafts of Light, and standing on the shoulders of the horse; then if thy meditation prolongeth itself, thou shalt unite all these Symbols into the Form of a Lion.”
[ibid.]

This Lion is, I think Narasimha, of whom Mrs. Chalier says:

“In the form of the ‘Man-Lion’ Narasimha, especially popular with the esoteric Pâñcarâtras, and also as the equally tantricized ‘Boar’ Varâha, Vishnu does closely approach Bhairava in character, to the point of emerging like Bhairava from the sacrificial (stake-)pillar.”
[The apollonian Vishnu and the Dionysian Bhairava: Bhakti and Initiatic Hierarchies.]

But recently I had a discussion with someone who calls himself “K S”, who told me the following:

“If you follow through the lore of Narasimha,
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Narasimha
you’ll see, although he is somewhat of a berserker, he never breaks
the rules of the boon granted by the God, and undertakes his
destruction with perfect cold intelligence, destroying things from
the ‘in between’. He himself emerges from the shattering of the
pillar that is the essence of time, the axis mundi between the two
worlds. And ultimately cannot stop his fury. Shiva finally
decapitates him and liberates Vishnu of this form.”
[Re: The Christ-souled Roman Caesar [CSRC].]

He began his reply as follows:

“I regard Hitler actually as more lightning-excess.”
[ibid.]

This was in response to my presentation of Savitri Devi’s idea that Hitler had, “in [his] psychological make-up, too much “sun” and not enough “lightning.”” [The Lightning and the Sun, chapter 3.]

The most intelligent woman I have ever encountered once told me about “the White Adonis and the Black Adonis”. She presented the White Adonis as Zeus and the Black Adonis as his father, Kronos (Saturn). The former was the sun god (“Zeus” being from the Indo-European root *dei- which means “to shine”: compare “Dyaus”, “day”, etc.); the latter was the thunderer. Zeus later assumed both of these functions, like your Indra.

The White and the Black Adonis are Mitra and Varuna in Hindu mythology, respectively - at least as they are conceived by Mrs. Chalier and one Philip Quadrio:

“The deity Mitra (friend, god of the contract), like the king, is responsible for the bond of men in this world and provides and maintains the social contract - he keeps the material order whole through the juridical bonds that unite men, he operates under the principle of *Hailagaz [cognate with the words “holy”, “whole”, “healthy”, etc.]. The deity Varuna on the other hand is related to the supernatural cosmic order (rta) and magic, he is a dark god who binds or fetters those who break the social contract. Varuna is a dark deity that uses his magical potency to bind and discipline individuals, he rules through magical might - fear is the force which binds folk to his laws.”
[Philip Quadrio, Odhinn and Tyr – Two modes of Sovereignty.]

Now Mrs. Chalier says that “the Vedic dualistic universe dominated by the opposition between the deva Indra and the asura (Mitra‑) Varuna” underwent a “complex structural transformation” “into the subsequent Hindu trinity of Brahmâ, Vishnu and Rudra, each of whom is in his own way a ‘god of the Totality.’” [Mitra-Varuna and the niravasita-Bhairava: The Royal Mahâbrâhmana.] She says:

“Mitra-Varuna is a dual divinity because it expresses the complementarity of the pure interdictory Mitraic and the impure transgressive Varunic poles of Vedic sacrality, also translated into the opposition between the upper and nether worlds of a dualistic cosmos.”
[ibid.]

So here we have a “pure interdictory” pole symbolised by Mitra, and an “impure transgressive” pole symbolised by Varuna. Narasimha, as an avatar of Vishnu, belongs wholly to the pure Mitraic pole, according to K S, because he never transgresses, “never breaks the rules of the boon granted by the God [Shiva, who granted a boon to Hiranyakasipu]”. And yet in the Sri Nrsimhasahasranama, he is called bhairavaya.

Mr. Visuvalingam defines transgressive sacrality as follows:

"It is important to clearly distinguish the phenomenon of transgressive sacrality in a religious tradition from the well-known opposition between orthodoxy and heresy. A religion is defined by its imposition of a specific system of observances and interdictions, binding on all its adherents and even more so on its spiritual elite. Heresy (or heterodoxy) challenges some of these doctrines, observances and interdictions and seeks to substitute new ones in their place, and in this way a new sectarian orthodoxy is established that can do without, survive and even aim at completely usurping and replacing the mother-religion. Where the original observances and interdictions are violated, this is merely the inevitable consequence of the adoption of new rules and doctrines which seek to wholly invalidate and replace the former, and not because any specific value is placed on the fact of transgression itself. This would be the relation between Buddhism and Brahmanism, Christianity and Judaism, Shiism and Sunnite Islam, Protestantism and Catholicism, to mention only the best-known examples.

“‘Transgressive sacrality’ within a religious tradition is something completely different for, though violating the interdictions and observances of the tradition in question, it does not seek to replace the latter. Instead it lays claim to a superior degree and second order of spirituality derived precisely from the violation of socioreligious interdictions whose general validity and binding force is not at all questioned by the transgressor. In fact, transgressive sacrality cannot operate without the existence of such binding and powerful taboos, and often presents itself as an esoteric form of the mother-religion, the latter serving as the exoteric prerequisite and recruiting ground for it. Unlike heterodoxy, which publicly questions and challenges the authority of the mother-religion, the adepts of transgressive sacrality often paradoxically play the role of champions of orthodox religion in the public life of their respective communities. Thus the brahmanicide Bhairava, guilty of the most heinous socioreligious crime in Hindu society and whose mythic model is imitated ritually by transgressive ascetics like the Kâpâlikas, is simultaneously the policeman-magistrate of the socioreligious order and the guardian of the territorial limits of the sacred city of Varanasi. Where such sacrality finds expression in well-defined initiatic currents, like Tantricism or the Pâshupata ‘sect’ in India, one often finds a graded development from the neophyte, observing more rigorous interdictions and a more intense asceticism than that generally prescribed by the public religion, to the adept, who is required to flagrantly violate even the most fundamental taboos of his society. This type of sacrality finds its most spectacular expression in the phenomenon of ‘ritual clowning’ in primitive religions, like that of the Pueblo Koyemshi, where the highest specialists of the sacred publicly violate fundamental taboos before the half-terrified half-amused spectators of the tribe, whose entire religion would seem to be founded on the observance of these very taboos, which the clowns indeed help maintain by their ridiculous negative example.”
[Transgressive Sacrality in Hinduism & the World Religions.]

Nietzsche sometimes cynically adopts this stance, for instance:

“Whether we immoralists are harming virtue?— Just as little as anarchists harm princes. Only since the latter are shot at do they again sit securely on their thrones. Moral: morality must be shot at.”
[Twilight of the Idols, Maxims and Arrows, 36.]

But Nietzsche did not just want to shoot at (Christian) morality, but shoot it dead. He wanted to overthrow Christianity, or rather, to overcome it without completely casting it aside: for “the Christian doctrine was the counterdoctrine to the Dionysian” [WtP 1051]. Unlike the Dionysian, which served as a transgressive sacrality to the Apollinian Greek religion, the Christian doctrine subverted the noble Apollinian religion, like a heresy. And to the Christian, in turn, the Dionysian is the “Devil”:

“The great weakness of Christianity lies in the fact that it ignores rhythm. It balances God with Devil instead of Vishnu with Siva. Its dualisms are antagonistic instead of equilibrating, and therefore can never issue in the functional third in which power is in equilibrium.”
[Dion Fortune, The Mystical Qabalah, XVIII, 21.]

Hello, All.
About the trinity:

I do not disagree with all that has been said, much of it has been quite well observed. But there are some rough edges. Let us look at it int he light of modern day.
Perhaps Vishnu is not necessarily the uberdictator of the uberarmy, but simply any kind of (power)structure, al club, a team, an army, a dancing couple, a family… etc. But I understand all are interested in individuals.
Do you like ‘football’, or ‘soccer’, abhi pratapta? In that case you probably know Johan Cruyff and Diego Armando Maradona. Both players are of extremely high quality, but both differently inclined. Maradona seeks to excel in the 5 minutes when he has the ball, whereas Cruyff seeks to excell all 90 minutes of the game. Maradona provides the spark of genius to please himself and Shiva, to entertain the Crowd and win a few matches for the Team, Cruyff has the scope of vision, the concentration, ans the stable endurance nexessarlly demanded of a Vishnu, or a man who is with Vishnu as you put it. Roughly:

“It is strange that in the past two and a half years I have lost roughly one competition match. […]
I did something that most players cannot; be concentrated every second. For that you don’t have to have the ball. In a sense the ball dominates the game, but at the same time the ball is but a small bit of the totality of what’s going on.
I had the ball quite alot, but not more than 5 minutes of the 90. In the end the other 85 minutes make the different: total concentration.” - JC

This strikes me as a very Vishnu-esque characteristic. This kind of leader quite literally embodies the team - or at least the team-spirit, in the boradest sense. Not just the team-inspiration, but it’s intelligence, it’s agility and it’s structure.

“Quickly after I left the team, the automatisms I had maintained there began to slip and disappear” - JC

It is clear why an order can only be imposed on a team by an individual with a strong imagination - ‘in itself’ it is nothing:

“Rules mean uniformity. And in football, nothing is ‘eenduidig’ (everything can be seen in multibe ways.) No act, not monet is ever the same.
Somtimes I see an offense, and I think, in itsel fthis is not allowed, but it is justified now. Football is both total order and total anarchy. That’s my way of thinking about the game.” -all quotes from the interview by Ischa Meyer.

The reason I associate the castes with these Sephiroth is the following. First off, let us look at Chesed and Geburah. Of these two Sephiroth, Dion Fortune writes:

"[Chesed] balances with mercy the severity of Geburah. It is anabolic, or upbuilding, in contra-distinction to the katabolism, or down-breaking of Geburah.

“These two aspects are very well expressed in the Magical Images assigned to these two Sephiroth. These Magical Images are both kings; that of Chesed a king on his throne, and that of Geburah a king in his chariot; in other words, the rulers of the kingdom in peace and in war; the one a lawgiver and the other a warrior.”
[The Mystical Qabalah, XVIII, 5-6.]

Now compare this to what Mrs. Chalier says:

“Vishnu embod[ies] the vector uniting the profane kshatriya (‘warrior’) with the pure pole of Brahmâ to generate the religious image of the king as the protector and even pivot of the socio-religious order (dharma), and Rudra incarnat[es] the vector linking him with the transgressive pole of Brahmâ to generate the equally religious image of the king as the savage destroyer in the impurity of the hunt and the violence of battle.”
[Mitra-Varuna and the niravasita-Bhairava: The Royal Mahâbrâhmana.]

This is enough to warrant an association between Vishnu and Chesed on the one hand, and Rudra and Geburah on the other. But Mrs. Chalier says that these gods embody “vectors” linking the warrior/king with the pure and the impure “poles” of Brahmâ, respectively. Now if we take Brahmâ to be the highest Sephira, Kether, and conceive of the next two Sephiroth, Chokmah and Binah, as the poles of Kether, then we see that Chesed and Geburah are indeed the Sephiroth that lie between Tiphareth and Chokmah and between Tiphareth and Binah, respectively. The Magical Image of Tiphareth is a majestic king; and we can indeed conceive of Chesed and Geburah as the two poles of Tiphareth, even as Chokmah and Binah are the same respective poles of Kether.

The king in Tiphareth moves into the sphere of Geburah when he goes to war, and into the sphere of Chesed when he administers his kingdom in peace. In the former case, he is possessed by Rudra, and, in his berserker rage in the heat of battle, by Bhairava:

“In his most destructive aspect Rudra (Siva) becomes Bhairava, the fearful destroyer, who takes pleasure in destruction.”
[Claudia Crawford, Nietzsche’s Dionysian arts: dance, song, and silence.]

Crawford’s essay is in the same bundle as Conway’s, i.e., Nietzsche, philosophy and the arts (Cambridge 1998). Conway’s is the twelveth, Crawford’s the thirteenth and last. It was in her essay that I first encountered Shiva; before that, I had only heard the name.

"This [Shiva’s Tandava dance, which belongs to his tamasic aspect as Bhairava or Vira-bhadra] is not the universal destruction and recreation of heavens and earths as in the first dance. Then what does Siva destroy? And what are the burning grounds?

[size=92]It is not the place where our earthly bodies are cremated, but the hearts of His lovers, laid waste and desolate. The place where the ego is destroyed signifies the state where illusion and deeds are burnt away. That is the crematorium, the burning-ground where Sri Nataraja dances, and whence He is named Sudalaiyadi, Dancer of the burning ground. ([Coomaraswamy, “Dance of Siva,” p.57])[/size]"
[ibid.]

This is the wrath of God, which is caused by his attachment to that which has passed away. It therefore belongs in Geburah, which is in the middle (i.e., not the highest) triangle on the Tree of Life. The Tree of Life, by the way, is a blueprint of the body, and - inasmuch as the human body is a microcosm reflecting the Macrocosm - a blueprint of the universe (but I, for one, do not project it into the metaphysical, but only use it psychologically).

Rudra pertains to Geburah, and thereby signifies the Tamas of Rajas - the destructive side of the will to preserve (attachment) - the will to destroy which is aroused by the thwarted will to preserve. Thus loss of the beloved, the loss of joy in the beloved, arouses sorrow, and sorrow, in turn, arouses wrath. To transcend this, one must rise to Binah, the Sephira above Geburah, and experience the Spiritual Experience proper to Binah, - the Trance of Sorrow. And as for transcending the Trance of Sorrow;

“The transcending of the Trance of Sorrow is to be made by means of such other trances as the Higher Beatific Vision”.
[Crowley, Little Essays, Sorrow.]

This Higher Beatific Vision is the Sattva of Sattva, the awakening of the Sahasrara Chakra. And indeed, the Tree of Life may be viewed as the Western version of the Chakra system.