On Friendship

"Friendship must be about something." --C.S. Lewis

C.S. Lewis wrote a classical interpretation of many emotions central to human life. In his book, The Four Loves, he addresses the meaning of friendship. Drawing upon rich resources such as the ancient Greeks, Romans, traditions borne through millennia, his view may be termed as western, if not universal.

Lewis delineates the many views of friendship; he describes it as mutuality, as 'seeing the same truth, looking outward, much as French writer, St. Exupery does; he explores friends in the context of erotic love; the search for Beauty, the engagement of spirituality, companionship, and he asserts that it's the least jealous of all the loves.

Where Lovers seek privacy, friends experience enclosure between themselves and the 'herd' rushing around them, and they may not be jealous so are often willing to admit another into their circle.
The American poet Emerson posed the question of a friend several times, simply asking, 'do you care about the same truths as I do?' The answer to this is the point at which a companion may move to a friend.
Shared activities and insights may be a draw for companions who 'share the road.' But a deeper, inner sense recognizing certain truths brings them into the realm of friend.

And while friends may not fully draw the same conclusions, they generally agree on the importance of questions. Seeing the shape of the world in similar fashion draws them to similar questions, if not responses.

Further Lewis argues simple friendship is entirely free of the need to be needed. He writes, "in a circle of true friends, each is simply what he is: stands for nothing but ones' self."

While Eros seeks out naked bodies, friendship seeks naked personalities. There is no absolute duty to friend anyone, nor is there a legal contract such as marriage. 

Friendship comes freely, entirely unencumbered with these other types of strictures.
Yet in modern, industrialized societies friendship is so often undervalued in favor of contractualized relationships as if these are somehow inherently better, more legitimate.
One cannot fail to notice the number and degree of divorces that abound in any given community.

Friends form moreover an appreciation of each other. They not only travel the same roads but their values within the realm of truths inform their judgement, leaving them more clear-eyed about one another.
They are observant of a mutual love and knowledge, and this forms itself into an appreciation a sentiment that often leaves one feeling in his deepest heart, humbled, what is he among those seemingly better, how lucky to be.
And when together among these friends, there is the knowledge that each brings out as if by magic the better in one self, the best, the funniest, the most clever, the beauty. In the conversation, the mind opens to something more, a perception of the self previously unknown comes into view. Life has no better gift to give than a good friend or two.

No Simple Subject is Evil...

"The fall of the first human being from... wisdom to folly was neither wise nor foolish..."  On Free Choice of the Will by Augustine of Hippo

While it touches all of us at one time or another, evil is no simple subject. Most of us have many questions and much confusion when confronted with an evil face, sometimes our very own face. Today many are squeamish about the subject itself.
In the Judeo-Christian tradition, evil necessarily encompasses the notion of wrong doers and sin, failings we all are many times confronted with. Writing perhaps his most influential thoughts for the posterity of the Western mind, philosopher and theologian Augustine of Hippo writes in his treatise On Free Choice of the Will, that there are many forms of evil both great and small.
There is no single evil that can be pointed to in the world of men.

"Moral truths are no different. Belief is required for understanding. If you are brought up among people who think morality is just a matter of opinion, it is highly improbable that you will ever be able to see that morals teach us a lot of true and interesting things about the intelligible world..." Your prior beliefs, and  prejudices will prevent your understanding. Without belief you then will not understand...
All that Augustine writes may be viewed as an effort to awaken the reader to a fresh view, previously unexamined... In his view, 'moral uprightness consists in submission to the eternal and immutable truths which are not of our own, individual making. Freedom moreover consists of submission to Truth.' Freedom is to cleave to truth, the essence of freedom. How so? Augustine writes that it is only truth and goodness which cannot be taken from the soul against its will... 

Everything that exists, he posits, has a degree of order, measure or value. In other words, in keeping with ancient Greek thought, every nature has a form.
A form that may be characterized as to its extent, measure and motivations in nature. For example it is the nature of a plow to plow land, so the more evenly and cleanly it plows, the better a plow it is. A good plow plows well. "
So the more form a nature has, the more goodness it possesses. Also true is that the more form a nature possesses, the more being it has." Evil, as Augustine of Hippo understood it, is a simple, complete deficiency.
Evil is a void or lack of form, and yet every nature in this view comes from the Creator, G-d. This One is the source of all being and goodness. Therein lies the paradox and darkness of evil. In the act of condemning something or some one, we acknowledge this fact.

Thus for human beings the only ultimately satisfying thing, as created beings with form, is to live up to their nature. "When the will turns away from the higher goods to the lower goods, it frustrates the rule of nature, reversing a natural order and subjecting itself to the un-natural rule of a master.
The being is thus enslaved and without genuine freedom because the only genuine freedom is submission to truth. Truth here is likened to an apple falling from a tree. It has no choice but to fall downward; it has no option to frustrate the rule of gravity.

On the contrary the human will is free, having a choice about when to obey the natural rule. And try it does for good and for ill. Airplanes may fly upward, but in thunderstorms they often crash. This sadly does not prevent men from trying to fly them at that time anyway with deadly consequences for themselves and their passengers.
"Human beings can voluntarily wreck their lives by running afoul of the rules that govern their nature. Yet a soul with that kind of will is free, free to choose what is either hopeless struggle against itself, or what is ultimate freedom to become what one most truly is.

Carl Jung Examines Kundalini Yoga

"If some great idea takes hold of us
from outside, we must understand that it takes hold of us only because something in us responds to it,
and goes out to meet it."
--C.S. Jung


In 1932 renowned psychologist Carl Jung, former student of Sigmund Freud, delivered a scholarly paper, now collected into a book, Visions, at a psychoanalysis conference in which he discussed the practice and symbolism of Kundalini Yoga. He also revealed to his listeners a startling correlation in the West between the practice of this type of Yoga, and the experience of a sudden, and perhaps not easily reversible sudden break with the realized world in some individuals.

He describes this break as a psychosis in which the individual believes himself unable to contact with, or function in the everyday world. He is then, psychotic by Western standards, Jung states.

On 16 November 1932 at the same conference, from the transcripts which survive, C.S. Jung says, " the child has grown into a peculiar sort of tree which is human above and snake below... the Kundalini. And below the diaphragm it is all snake... And what is worm below is divine above...'

'In the Chakras, the Kundalini was always separate...We must never forget that the Kundalini system is a specifically Indian production, and we have to deal here with Western material... You know that Kundalini changes on her way up to ajna, the lower part, the part of darkness where the Purusha does not appear, is the black snake; there one is absolutely swallowed up in nature, in emotion, and everything beyond emotion is not perceived because it is not perceptible...."

Jung continues, "So, to a primitive, a man who thinks is most uncanny, a very bad man, a sorcerer full of hatred who will surely poison you... When you have that point of view, you are inside of the monster. When you come through the diaphragm, you are outside of the monster, and then you can see what really held you was that divine being which appeared to you, when looked at from the inside, as a big snake. That is the reason why this being is monstrous....'

"There is an intuitive philosophy taken over from Proclus, the Neo-Platonist, who extolled, 'Where there is time, there is creation.' Thus time and creation are the same...

Jung further discusses in this same lecture the evolution of Gnosis in the Greek world and the development of Christianity. He notes that Saint Paul first was a gnostic before his conversion; the prevailing ideas of both gnosis and the phrenes of Homer. "In those days Christ ranked with Bacchus, or Dionysus. In the case of the phrenes, when the hero is killed, the phrenes leave him by the mouth, or by above, but that which goes to the lower regions is the psyche...'

'It is exactly the same in Chinese philosophy where the shen is the masculine soul that goes [rises] up to the gods; the kuei soul is female; It sinks down to the darkness... you see, the Chinese understood man as consisting of two parts...'

'Now this "kuei soul according to Eastern and Greek tradition is not immortal...it slowly loses its form and vanishes into the lights of the Heavens... The little flame from my breast rushed forth and sought to merge with this figure. What has happened here? Well, a sort of mystic union. "
The ego attempts to merge, or unite with the universal Self.

The ego self shows vivid desire; flame is always vivid desire to merge-- and where would that lead? To a seeming death--or to something new.

Jung concludes, to the Western mind, the overly close parallels of opposite, of black and white, of hot and cold, of far and near, etc. creates a complete state of unconsciousness, a collapse of clarity. In its place, complete confusion, a state much like insanity comes to reign.

Opposing factors coming too close together would render many people in a state of complete disorientation. They lose their values, their sense of rightness and have no idea what is wrong with themselves. They just feel that they simply don't care. In the mind of Kundalini, is the snake darkness? Is it light? Is it male or female? Perhaps it is both. How so? With new consciousness, what then am I? Is my 'self' enlightened, or a self, dis-integrated?

The self may be righted again, says Jung, by dropping deeper into the Chakras system, into the water to quench the fire.
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