“I hate quotations.” Ralph Waldo Emerson

Rob Brezsny’s Astrology Newsletter

JANUARY 9, 2008

FreeWillAstrology.com

“You have everything you need in the present situation to work with impeccability. That doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t work toward manifesting additional resources and opportunities. It does mean that the present situation supplies you with everything you need to take the next step.”

– Jonathan Zap, “A Guide to the Perplexed Interdimensional Traveler”

My book

“PRONOIA IS THE ANTIDOTE FOR PARANOIA:

How the Whole World Is Conspiring to Shower You with Blessings”

is available for sale at

tinyurl.com/qaj62 and

tinyurl.com/3dsx6q

Here’s an excerpt:

ART LESSONS

French Impressionist painter Henri Matisse wanted his art to be “free from unsettling or disturbing subjects . . . soothing, a cerebral sedative as relaxing as a comfortable armchair.”

Spanish painter Pablo Picasso had a different opinion. “Art is offensive,” he asserted. “At least, art should be allowed to be offensive. It ought to be forbidden to ignorant innocents, never allowed into contact with those not sufficiently prepared. Yes, art is dangerous.”

As you practice the art of pronoia, you will probably get best results if you swing back and forth between Matisse’s and Picasso’s approaches.

Every once in a while, try out William Butler Yeats’ idea, too: “Art that doesn’t attempt the impossible is not performing its function.”

To read news and features from my book, go here:

tinyurl.com/lhwx2

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

OTHER PRONOIA RESOURCES:

This week I’m featuring the work of JONATHAN ZAP.

He’s putting together a collection of his writings in book form. For the moment, we have to be satisfied with reading his insights on his website at zaporacle.com.

Here are some of my favorite essays:

“The Glorified Body: Metamorphosis of the Body and the Crisis Phase of Human Evolution”

tinyurl.com/2bg6ag

“Suffering associated with body image has reached such epidemic proportions in our culture that it must be counted as one of the greatest spiritual plagues ever to be visited upon mankind.”

“Resource Fluctuations Happen–Working with Scarcity and Abundance”

tinyurl.com/yq96pq

“The Taoist assumption is that the universe is unfolding as it should. Resources fluctuate, and fluctuation is the heartbeat of life, an essential part of the dynamic aliveness and interest of incarnation. And it takes times of both abundance and scarcity, along with every other sort of fluctuation, for there to be development.”

“Projection: The Enemy of Peace and Justice”

tinyurl.com/28etdr

“Environmental destruction, racism, violence, injustice, war derive from a single source — the human psyche. An activist who is not interested in psychological underpinnings is analogous to a botanist who is not interested in biology.”

“Dynamic Paradoxicalism”

tinyurl.com/2djg56

“The greatest of life skills is the ability to live with ambiguity, ambivalence, and paradox without trying to regularize these uncertainties into finished, absolute truths.”

“Kill the Time Grid and Fire up your Life: A Lesson in Practical Magic”

tinyurl.com/yutjyd

“The test of a big dream is to ask yourself, ‘Will I remember this well on my death bed?’ If you have a big dream you will probably find that to accomplish it will require a minimum of two hours of devoted activity per day.”

“The Path of the Numinous: Living and Working with the Creative Muse”

or “The Muse: Ego Can’t Live with Her, Creative Fulfillment Can’t Happen without Her”

tinyurl.com/yvcwls

“A Guide to the Perplexed Interdimensional Traveler”

tinyurl.com/2vn7a7

To find out about Jonathan’s DREAM INTERPRETATION service and other counseling services, go to zaporacle.com and click on the blue-green sphere. I have personally benefited greatly from doing dream work with him.

To use Jonathan’s ORACLE, go to zaporacle.com and click on the gold sphere at the top. Here are some quotes from the Oracle cards:

1. “The core of your relationships to people, sex, time, money, power, eating, politics, career, health, and spirituality is your relationship to yourself. Get that relationship right (a moment-by-moment challenge of epic proportions) and all those other relationships will be as good as they possibly can be. Omit, neglect, or distort any part of your relationship to yourself and all those other relationships will accordingly be diminished and distorted.”

2. “Find your spirit medicine and remember that what works for someone else, may not work for you (and vice-versa). Also what works for you when used consciously, sparingly, in just right the circumstances, might be disastrous as a habit.”

3. “The Warrior must be aware that the psyche is conservative in nature, preferring old, self-destructive neurotic patterns to the unknown. The Warrior must have the insight and determination to break those patterns, particularly those created by early childhood situations.”

4. “The liminal state is characterized by ambiguity, openness, and indeterminacy. One’s sense of identity dissolves to some extent, bringing about disorientation. Liminality is a period of transition where normal limits to thought, self-understanding, and behavior are relaxed — a situation which can lead to new perspectives.”

(Note: I endorse Jonathan Zap because I like his work. This is not an advertisement, and I get no kickbacks.)

Please tell me your own personal nominations for PRONOIA RESOURCES.

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Contents of the Free Will Astrology Newsletter are Copyright 2008 Rob Brezsny

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Your real identity is that you are an interdimensional traveler who arrived from some other dimension at birth and who, almost every day, travels to another dimension called the dream time, has a guaranteed portal out of this matrix called death, and who interpenetrates with the varied dimensions generated by other human psyches.

—-From A Guide to the Perplexed Interdimensional Traveler

You are the ones I call out to from the edge of the campground because this is the time when the individual, isolated mutants, like scattered embers glowing in the cold, dark forest need to gather together to create a blaze of many colors, the radiance of which will reach out to the four corners of this richly chaotic realm…

—-From A Guide to the Perplexed Interdimensional Traveler

Our desires, addictions, obsessions and various neurotic sufferings are predicated on our enslavement to linear time. Against the backdrop of the dread ticking of the clocking we anxiously seek to enforce our will on the Tao. But against the backdrop of the infinite and eternal, the phantoms we pursue appear quite differently. —–Jonathan Zap (Zap Oracle card)

The greatest of life skills is the ability to live with ambiguity, ambivalence and paradox without trying to regularize these uncertainties into finished, absolute truths.  From Dynamic Paradoxicalism—the Anti-Ism Ism
People are not always what they seem. Respect the otherness of the other and don’t be sure you know who they are. It is hard enough to know who you are. (Zap Oracle card)

As the race car drivers say, don’t look at the wall if you are heading toward it, look at where you want to go, and where I want to go is through those shimmering planes of improbable coincidence, through the interstices of the web, sparkling constellations of thought forms and images encoded as zeros and ones, indeterminate autonomous zones where fellow mutants disassociate from Babylon Matrix, shape-shift and shimmer iridescently with possibilities.  I seek to follow time lines less traveled by, but where there are promises to keep, and many paths and errands meet, and I avoid the timelines of white powders which may seem lovely, dark and deep, but are where withering souls go to creep.   —From Friends don’t let Friends Incarnate in the Babylon Matrix

Dynamic paradoxicalism is my attempt to create a meta-philosophy that is a counter to fundamentalist and absolutist thought which is nearly as common amongst New Agers and the left as it is among religious fundamentalists and the right.  The greatest of life skills is the ability to live with ambiguity, ambivalence and paradox without trying to regularize these uncertainties into finished, absolute truths.  Dynamic paradoxicalism recognizes that most important areas of truth exist as a paradox where seemingly contradictory elements have a dynamic level of validity based on context specific circumstances.  Although a greater conception that synthesizes the disparate elements of a paradox into a grand unit is an awesome addition to the conceptual tool box, it is not always the most useful tool in the box.  Dynamic paradoxicalism recommends an ability to slide between the poles of a paradox, in some circumstances favoring the point of view of one side of the paradox, in other cases the other pole, and in still other cases favoring the unified view.

—–From Dynamic Paradoxicalism—the Anti-Ism Ism

Always remember that there are time lines in the affairs of  a mutant which, entered when portals open, lead on to fortune, omitted and all the voyage of our incarnation is bound in shallows and in miseries.  And oh how can one ever tell how rich the Babylon matrix is in shallows and in miseries! Intricate networks of stagnant, toxic rivulets seeping into florescent cubicles, scheduled incarnations set to run by clock and currency, the folk that seem to dwindle with every nervous step,  hungry ghosts hurrying, then hobbling, on the path of winding down.  In such a darkly trending part of the  multiverse are we now afloat, and we must seize the portals when they open, or lose the timelines of sparkly green fire which lead us to other worlds than these.

—– From Friends Don’t let Friends Incarnate in the Babylon Matrix

There are other paths than those of shallow misery, but they are easier to see when you realize the Babylon Matrix is only one of a multiverse of dreams. But what a noisy, bustling, buzzing, in your face sort of a dream it is, the dream of a Cyclops with one blinded eye careening drunkenly down the darkened skull-shadowed avenues of history while headlines blare “ This dream is an emergency!  Grasp it with white knuckles!”
—– From Friends Don’t let Friends Incarnate in the Babylon Matrix

And has no one ever told you the basic “facts of life” that to look into another’s eyes is to witness beacons from another dimension flashing across the night of time? Did you believe the Babylon Matrix lie that other entities were hottie objects with which you could have “casual sex” (dumbest of dumb oxymorons)? Didn’t you know that intimacy with the other is an impingement, an interpenetration, a merging of dimensions with consequences of cosmic proportions? Didn’t you realize that all relationship is interdimensional travel?—–From A Guide to the Perplexed Interdimensional Traveler

The core of your relationships to people, sex, time, money, power, eating, politics, career, health, spirituality, the Tao, the multiverse is your relationship to yourself. Get that relationship right (a moment by moment challenge of epic proportions) and all those other relationships will be as good as they possibly can be. Omit, neglect, or distort any part of your relationship to yourself and all those other relationships will accordingly be diminished and distorted.  (Zap Oracle card)

According to the Taoist I Ching, evolution occurs on the path of “reverse alchemy,” the path of returning to Tao and essence. It does not necessarily occur merely by being in tune with the Tao and essence. Viruses, daisies, spiders all live perfectly in tune with the Tao and their essence, never deviate from it, but they don’t have the human potential for metamorphic evolution. Acquired conditioning inevitably separates us from our essence and attunement with the Tao, but if we are able to follow the path of reverse alchemy, undo the conditioning and rediscover our essence and Tao, then we will have furthered our evolution and the evolution of self awareness everywhere.  (Zap Oracle card)

The heart has two phases, contraction and expansion, systole and diastole. Mammal incarnation has two phases it cycles through on a daily basis—-waking and dreaming. We are interdimensional travelers, arriving from another dimension at birth, departing to other dimensions at death. The cycle of the day recapitulates the cycle of a life. At night/old age we run out of energy, grow sleepy, and eventually surrender to the temporary oblivion of sleep/death. Sleep/death is not an eternity of velvet darkness, the velvet darkness is polka dotted with shimmering portals—-incarnations/dreams

There is a hidden evolutionary side to narcissism lacking in all descriptions of I have encountered. Narcissism also wants to explode the barriers that obstruct powerful communication of the self with others and to vividly enter their perceptual field. A perfect narcissistic fantasy, for example, would be to emulate Jimmy Hendrix playing searing guitar chords to a stadium full of mesmerized, electrified fans. What we call narcissism may actually be the pathologized form of an evolutionary drive toward more powerful communication, toward new telepathies. Those with a greater latent capacity for such communication may experience alienation and an insatiable urge for greater recognition from others. So don’t cringe from your narcissism, but don’t let it rule you either.

The personal view can trap us in the forever chaos of he said/she said. An impersonal or cosmic view requires looking fiercely into things without emotional entanglement. Cut through to the core of what is going on. One way to do this with your life is to ask yourself the question: What will I remember well on my death bed?—–(Zap Oracle card)

See the patterns of your world. Often there are acausal parallels between the physical world and the psychic world, in the past they were often called “portents” or “omens” and in many cases people projected too much into them. Modern fundamentalist materialists assume they are “coincidences” if they notice them at all. The Taoists saw the paralleling of inner and outer as inevitable and worthy of alert observation. (Zap Oracle card)

The central idea of the I Ching is that we are always cycling through classic patterns of energy and change. Oracle consultations, especially with the I Ching, can be a way of seeing such underlying patterns of energy and change. Another way is self inquiry—stripping away the details and asking yourself what essential pattern of energy and change is in play in your life right now?

(Zap Oracle card)

Avoid meaningless work if possible. Jobs take up too much of your time and life energy to have no intrinsic value besides a means to get you a pay check. Sometimes you may have to accept such a devil’s bargain to survive, but if at all possible find meaningful livelihood. Avoid work that you won’t remember well on your death bed!- (Zap Oracle card)

Keep secret work secret. Consciousness work should be shared with the worthy—spiritual allies that share your commitment to consciousness. Prosletizing indicates an unbalanced psyche with a compulsive need to get others to share the imbalanced belief system. As Aleister Crowley says, “If I tell a man something he is not ready to hear, it is the same as if I told him a lie.” Consciousness work is depotentiated if you spill it out everywhere. When a pick-pocket sees a saint, he sees only his pockets (Zap Oracle card)

You are a transformer. A human being is an entity incarnating in a corporeal primate body which is undergoing a state of continuous transformation from conception through birth, growth, aging and death. We live in a state of continuous metamorphosis and that is great! Not so great for an ego that would like to hold on to things, identify and resist change! As a super complex process, human incarnation bifurcates into either a higher state of organization or a lower one. As a Dylan lyric puts it, “He who’s not busy being born, is busy dying.” Embrace transformation and ride the wave of metamorphosis. Resist change and you will experience a drowning sensation as you get sucked downward by the undertow. (Zap Oracle card)

You have everything you need in the present situation to work with impeccability. That doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t work toward manifesting additional resources and opportunities. It does mean that the present situation supplies you with everything you need to take the next step. Think out of the box, people have changed the world with nothing more than pen and paper. You can create magic out of mundane materials if you creatively embrace what is before you.  (Zap Oracle card)

I was once walking down the street at lunchtime on a weekday and saw one carefully groomed yuppie after another passing me.  There was not a hair out of place, and they seemed dressed up to look just like ads they had seen in glossy magazines. In my mind’s eye I saw that their energy had formed a kind of exoskeleton, their identification with persona, clothing, accessories and bodily appearance had formed them into a kind of full body helmet, polished, blow dried, glazed with subtle cosmetics, while somewhere the self, like a shriveled, malnourished, somnambulant embryo lay dormant. Molt the persona that has become attached to you through identification and feel yourself grow larger.  Don’t wait, like Darth Vader, for the exoskeleton to fall away on your death bed.

(Zap Oracle Card entitled “Beware the Hollow Folk”)

You may never know all the mysterious depths that cause some people to stand so much closer to you than others.  There is the often monotonous carnival of circumstantial acquaintance, and then there are those certain people you are connected to by inner ties. They are like planets with orbits aligning, even intersecting with the orbit of your planet. You need the whole field of relationships, the acquaintances in outer concentric bands, the strangers you have never met in more distant and diffused bands.  And then there are those few in the close bands…those connected to you through karma you can’t fully discern, those who light up your eros, those who are spiritual allies that help you to recognize and fulfill your great work, those whom you are called to help on a depth level, those who may be all of the above. All the concentric bands of relationship deserve your mindful awareness.  Be the wise alchemist over seeing the asymmetrical and ever shifting flows of energy happening at each of the bands of concentric relation. (Zap Oracle Card)

It is so crucial to respect the otherness of the other– they are like another world, another dimension, and despite whatever proximity they have to our world/dimension there are so many unknown aspects. It is a life time struggle to begin to know ourselves, how easily and falsely do we presume to know the other and merge our agenda and projections with their veiled identity. (Zap Oracle Card)
The immature attitude toward transformation is to see impeccability as a sacrifice to gain a reward. It degrades the present into a sacrifice for an imaginary “transformed” magical future. The immature approach turns all efforts into their opposite, light into dark. True impeccability is existential, it is done for its own sake, not in the expectation of anything. Only such a stance has the detachment from result to achieve the fluidity and adaptability to mean a lasting value. This type of impeccability is not “for” transformation. It is in itself the revolutionary transformation you seek. Transformation occurs when you strive to give up the expectant attitude and replace it with a lasting effort to seek impeccability as an end in itself.   (journal quote)
Babylon Matrix, you poisonous, parasitic lattice of antilife decrees, territorial aggression and evil hegemony of dominator primates, you far from equilibrium toxic patriarchy hurtling toward the strange attractor of quantum evolutionary change, you suffocating cocoon of shrinking parasite-ridden medieval leather bristling with the claws and stingers of puppet-headed warlike primates. You, Babylon Matrix, your darkness has metastasized through the skull shadows of our long descent into history. But your Gregorian days are numbered…. (Friends don’t let Friends Incarnate in the Babylon Matrix)
Intentionality is shown by the act itself. By your actions you reveal yourself, rather than by looking at yourself.  (this, and the next few are journal quotes)
Make a decision for the moment and act on it .
Leaving the moment is self deception. Being in the moment is self love .
Excess lingering in the shadows of reflection is such suffering while the path of positive action awaits .
Insight may be irrelevant and recursive when will is the issue.
Like a fractal, like a hologram the small part recapitulates the whole. By looking within you can see everything. (Zap Oracle card)

Find your spirit medicine and remember that what works for someone else, may not work for you (and vice-versa). Also what works for you when used consciously, sparingly, in just right the circumstances, might be disastrous as a habit.  (Zap Oracle card)

Emerson said, “The problem with travelling is that you take yourself with you.” But there is also the potential of traveling to be a secular pilgrimage, rite of initiation, but you can’t rely on a change of settings to take the place of inner dynamism.(Zap Oracle card)

You are much more than your body—don’t judge yourself by its reflection. (Zap Oracle card)

You need to be the alchemist of your own inner cauldron. You know the medicine you need better than anyone—-find it, make it, use it and don’t forget to offer some medicine to others as well. (Zap Oracle card)

What we often don’t realize about a loss, about the dark night of the soul, is the space that it opens up for us where new life can grow. (Zap Oracle card)

Much of what binds us into the matrix is surrender to gender stereoptypes which encourage us to feel incomplete and desperately in need of someone else to find a wholeness that can only be rediscovered within.

The Warrior must be aware that the psyche is conservative in nature preferring old, self destructive neurotic patterns to the unknown. The Warrior must have the insight and determination to break those patterns, particularly those created by early childhood situations.

Imagine Getting More (Zap Oracle Card # 332)   copyright 2007, Jonathan Zap

One of the most potent of spells or enchantments that can bind you into the matrix is to live under the compulsion of always having to imagine getting more in the future.  Under this spell you become a donkey forever hypnotized by an imaginary carrot just up ahead. The carrot, the “more”, that ever glitters in your mind’s eye like a ring of power, could be many things—–sex, money, power, fame, looks—-often the imagined more is a vision of that more perfected life just up ahead, the one in which you have realized your ideal weight, made your first hundred million, and have an amazing lover with whom you live in a house featured in Architectural Review…  The phrase in the cigarette ad— “Imagine getting more…”—- is meant to encourage you in the profitable belief that cigarette smoking leads to getting more sex. The warning label, black and white and boxed in, reminds the alert mind that what you will be getting more of is cancer.  What you get more of when your eyes are bedazzled by the imaginary carrot just up ahead is more cancer of the soul.  Your vision, your consciousness, is misdirected away from the present moment where it could have more power and life right now.
Most people on the planet experience scarcity in one or more key areas of their lives.  Some scarcities are related to needs and others to wants.  Common areas of perceived scarcity include money, physical resources, social status, youth, looks, sex, physical health, fulfilling relationships, inner resources, and meaningfulness.  Most lives involve strange and tense combinations of scarcity and abundance. For example, a tan and sleek billionaire walking off the tennis court might be dying of a famine of meaningfulness.  Our vision of scarcity is often highly distorted and one-sided. Perceived scarcities range from delusory toxic wants to what would be genuinely fulfilling if we had more of it.
Scarcity comparisons with other people are almost always unreliable and highly distorted. Typically we compare our area of most irritating scarcity with someone else who seems to have that area filled to overflowing.  We never look at the whole portfolio of scarcity and abundance in the other’s incarnation.  We can’t look at it, we’d have to know how their whole life turned out. We see tall, handsome Christopher Reeve galloping on his thorough bred horse, we don’t necessarily see up ahead where he gets tossed to the ground a quadriplegic, and goes through a life phase of horrendous scarcities as he becomes more soulful and compassionate and discovers new forms of fulfillment.
“Imagine getting more” and “envious comparison” are intertwined spells that bind us into neurotic suffering.  These spells promise fulfillment in the future, but create hollowness in the present.
Hollowness is the mind set of the ring wraith as it withers the present while it forever reaches toward that glittering precious just up ahead.  Hollowness is the state of one who forever reaches toward the future to be filled up.
Don’t wither the vitality of the present by looking at it with the eyes of scarcity and victim hood. All too easily you can build a reality tunnel defined by your view of the present as the time of scarcity before you have abundance of money, or before you have the perfect lover, the perfect body…whatever you covet getting more of.  This is the time that counts right now, this time with its strange and tense combination of scarcity and unrecognized abundance, the time that gives you everything you need to work with in the present moment.  Break the spells, become disenchanted and more powerful, work with what you got right now.
See Kill the Time Grid and Fire up your Life

In
The Path of the Numinous I describe the origins of this paper as follows:
When I was about fourteen years old I woke up in the middle of the night and some inner prompting told me to turn on the radio. I had a futuristic looking clock radio by my bed that was always tuned to WBAI, a listener supported counter culture radio station. WBAI was one of my main lines into the Sixties, and I have never encountered a radio station remotely like it before or since. It was run by hippies, and nothing was too weird to be broadcast, and it was a fountain of creativity and novelty twenty four hours a day in the Sixties and Seventies in New York City. I clicked on the radio, and heard a voice coming out of it that sounded like my own mind speaking, but coming out of this external device. I had never had such an experience, had always assumed that the inner voice of my mind was unique to me and not to be encountered on the outside. The essential perspective of this voice was me, but here it was coming out of a radio speaker. I felt like I was experiencing an auditory hallucination, there was a rupture of plane as outside and inside interpenetrated and the firewall I thought existed between inner and outer burned down. I listened fascinated and entranced. Eventually there was a station identification break and I learned what was happening. WBAI was doing an all night reading of Fydor Dostoevsky’s novella, Notes from Underground .

At the time I didn’t know what to make of this experience, but made a mental note that one day I would have to find out who this Dostoevsky was and how it could be that a Russian writer could so perfectly express the inner perspective of my mind way back in the Nineteenth Century.

I wanted to read Dostoevsky, I was following the Path of the Numinous, and I wanted to find out more about the voice that was coming out of the radio, but I didn’t fully realize that yet. My original proposal was that I would write about Dostoevsky’s St. Petersburg, a city that attracted both his fascination and loathing. Because it was one of the first cities to be completely preplanned, Dostoesky saw it as an artificial world, a landscape of the soulless ego. This was a perfectly intriguing subject, but it was not where the muse wanted me to go.

Fairly soon into the project I came to realize that what was really numinous, what I really had to investigate was why that voice from the radio sounded like the inside of my own mind. As I read Dostoevsky I found that I felt something in common with a number of his central characters, not just the man from underground, but also Raskolnikov in Crime and Punishment and a few others. I had only taken one psychology course, the introductory survey course that everybody takes, but I was starting to discover that my mind was psychologically oriented and that I seemed to have psychological intuitions and thinking without having been trained in it. My mother was a psychologist for forty-four years, so I did grow up hearing and overhearing some psychology, but much of my insights seemed to come from the inside. Reading Dostoevsky novels I began to use certain of his characters to build a psychological model of a personality type I called “ the profound egocentric

While I was building this psychological model there was a decisive moment, perhaps the first of those twenty to forty minute zones when an entire vista of awareness opened up. It was at night and I was sitting on a park bench by myself on a path that led to the college library. Suddenly there was a vast coalescing of insights and intuitions, everything seemed to come together. I saw how this personality type worked in the Dostoevsky characters and how it worked in me, how it limited me, and how I was now in a situation with allies where I could begin to transcend those limitations. This was, for the first nineteen years of my life, an epiphany, a breakthrough into an unprecedented self knowledge. I felt the inner tectonic plates shift, and at that exact moment, on that park bench, I felt then, and feel now, that my adult consciousness began. To this day, when I look back at the landscape of memory that was the dividing line, the memories that come after that park bench are of a different sort as they are seen through the eyes of an analytical, self awareness that had not really come into its own before I sat down on that bench.

Dostoevsky and the Profound Egocentric

© Jonathan Zap 1977,2006

Spring, 1977 College Scholars Program, Ursinus College

Adviser:  Dr. Decatur

Profound egocentrism is a psychological concept that I believe is necessary for a complete understanding of Dostoevsky and many of his characters. It is also a concept that can be useful in a psychological approach to literature in general.
A Comprehensive Dictionary of Psychological and Psychoanalytical Terms defines “ egocentrism” as “ concerned with oneself, preoccupied with one’s own concerns and relatively insensitive to the concerns of others, though not necessarily selfish . Profound is used here in two senses. The first sense implies great depth and scope —- dealing with many levels and deeply within those levels. “ A profound effect on the situation .” The second sense implies great intellectual depth and complexity e.g. “ a profound philosophy .” The profound egocentric is a personality of great depth and intellectual complexity and is egocentric in many, many levels of his personality and very deeply within those levels. Profound egocentrism is an exclusive class within egocentrism.

Everyone (some autistic children may be exceptions) has to a greater or lesser extent, a sense of “ I .” A sense of “ I ” can be defined as a sense of one’s own being and thought process. Everyone also has, to varying degrees, a sense of other . A sense of other can be defined as an intuitive realization of the independent existence of other human beings, and of an independent, ongoing mental process in others.

The profound egocentric has a very exaggerated sense of I. Closely related to this exaggerated sense of I are extreme sensitivity, self-awareness, self-consciousness (in the commonplace sense of feeling awkward), and inner-directed thinking and personality. Qualities more indirectly related to the exaggerated sense of I are high intelligence and a constant flow of creative thought (thought not just a response to thee environment – abstract thought for example).
The profound egocentric’s sense of other and outside reality is generally weak. This sense of other has an inverse relationship with environmental stress. In other words as situations become more trying, the sense of other and outside reality can disintegrate completely.

Closely related to this weak sense of other and outside reality is an inability to relate to people in a natural way, and an unwillingness to associate with people. A disintegrated sense of other and outside reality also results in an inability to distinguish between hallucination, dream, imagination and reality, and a failure to recognize other human beings as independent entities.

Dostoevsky very concisely summarizes the net effect on the personality of an exaggerated sense of I and of a weak sense of other:
But though Ratkin was very sensitive about everything that concerned himself, he was very obtuse as regards the feelings and sensations of others – partly from his youth and inexperience, partly from his intense egoism.
In order to make this concept more concrete and more applicable to individual characters, I am going to approach the profound egocentric as a psychological model. A psychological model is a very useful device, but it has some drawbacks. The greatest drawback in transforming a psychological concept into a psychological model is that it can seem to imply greater universality than is actually the case.

Although all profound egocentrics have a unified concept in common, they do not necessarily have every functional characteristic of the psychological model in common. The greatest differences are in superficial behavioral symptoms that may be peculiar to particular characters. The more directly derived characteristics, however, differ only in degree. The difference in degree can be roughly explained by the consideration of five variables, or by dividing the profound egocentric into five stages of development. These explanations of differences in degree will be presented after the psychological model when they will be most meaningful.

The intensity of the profound egocentric’s inner world and his weak sense of other make him feel removed from the rest of humanity. Profound egocentrics, as a general trait, are loners and keep to themselves. The central character of Crime and Punishment , Raskolnikov, is a good example:

It should be noted that Raskolnikov had scarcely any friends at the university. He held himself aloof, never went to see anyone and did not welcome visitors.

In 1841, one of Dostoevsky’s instructors gave the following description of him:
His favorite place to work was the embrasure in the company’s corner dormitory… In this spot isolated from the other desks, F. M. Dostoevsky used to sit and occupy himself. It frequently happened that he would not notice anything that was going on around him.

One of Dostoevsky’s classmates recalled that, “He always held himself aloof, and he struck me as being almost constantly apart from the others…” (Mochulsky, p. 15) Dolgoruky the narrator of The Adolescent tells us that, “There’s really nothing so marvelous about people to bother so much about them.” Recalling his school days Dolgoruky shows a more serious sense of isolation:

Even at school, I had to overcome the disgust and force myself to chat familiarly with my classmates and I certainly never became really close with any of them. I built myself a shell and stayed in it. ( The Adolescent , p. 47)

The profound egocentric does not just tend avoid others, but actively withdraws from human contact:
He had resolutely withdrawn from all human contacts, like a tortoise retreating into its shell… (about Raskolnikov, Crime and Punishment , p. 23)

Dolgoruky repeats this sentiment almost word for word:

I’ll break off with them, leave everything, and withdraw into my shell. Yes my shell exactly that – I’ll hide inside it like a tortoise! ( The Adolescent , p. 14)

The profound egocentric’s intuitive belief, as compared to an intellectual understanding, in the existence of other people is normally weak and under stress may become nonexistent. With an abstract, but not an instinctive realization of the existence of other people, the profound egocentric feels a gigantic distance separating him from other human beings:

The most surprising thing of all, in general, was the unbridgeable chasm which lay between him and all the others. It was as if he and they belonged to different races. They regarded him, and he them with mistrust and hostility. (about Raskolnikov, Crime and Punishment , p. 23)

The profound egocentric can feel a separation from people in a very literal sense: “…everything round me seems as if it were happening somewhere else…Even you…it is as if I were looking at you from a thousand miles away…” (Raskolnikov, Crime and Punishment, p. 196) The profound egocentric feels different from other people and out of place: “Why, why am I here? Why do I feel an alien? Why am I on ‘another planet’?” 5

The profound egocentric’s sense of outside reality is capable, especially under stress, of disintegrating completely. The process of disintegration seems to begin with a weakening and eventual collapse of the intuitive sense of outside reality. At that point the profound egocentric’s concept of reality is purely abstract and intellectual. When Raskolnikov’s sense of outside reality breaks, for example, he looks around him and says , “This is all conditional, all relative, all merely forms.” The profound egocentric’s constant self-exploration and abstract reasoning eventually lead him to question all intellectual beliefs. Without the benefit of intuitive premises the profound egocentric finds himself incapable of proving to himself the existence of outside reality. In other words, he can get as far as “cogito ergo sum,” but no farther. Ivan Karamazov’s internal demon, in a dialogue with Ivan, crystallizes this philosophical dead end:

No, you are not some apart, you are myself, you are I and nothing more! You are rubbish, you are my fancy!

Well, if you like, I have the same philosophy as you, that would be true. Je pense, donc je suis , I know that for a fact, all the rest, all these worlds, God and even Satan – all that is not proved, to my mind. Does all that exist of itself, or is it only an emanation of myself, a logical development of my ego which alone has existed forever… ( Brothers Karamazov , p. 781)

Dolgoruky also has this egocentric view of reality and sees it as generating from his own being,

Here are all these people rushing around hurrying desperately when, in fact, who knows, perhaps it’s all only somebody’s dream and not a single person here is real, genuine, not a single action is really taking place. What will happen if the dreamer suddenly wakes up and everything just vanishes? ( The Adolescent , p. 136)

In the Dream of a Ridiculous Man, a short story Dostoevsky wrote near the end of his life, we see a total collapse of both outside reality and a sense of other:

It seemed clear to me that life and the world in some way or other depended on me now. It might almost be said that the world seemed to be created for me alone. If I were to shoot myself, the world would cease to exist – for me at any rate to say nothing of the possibility that nothing would in fact exist for anyone after me and the whole world would dissolve as soon as my consciousness became extinct, would disappear in a twinkling like a phantom, like some integral part of my consciousness, and vanish without leaving a trace behind, for all this world and all these people exist only in my consciousness.

(something goes horribly wrong with the formatting in this document after this and everything appears in italics,  hope you can get past this annoyance)

Later in my paper I will go into the profound egocentric’s fatal pride and distance from God as a result of his reasoning ability. In the above quotation we can see the ultimate act of pride and separation from God. The character thinks of the universe as existing inside his consciousness, and therefore of his being God.

(In this paper I seem to assume a monotheistic POV, perhaps because that was Dostoevsky’s point of view, and possibly because it was my own at the time as well.  I should have made a clearer distinction, and pointed out that the concepts of pride, reason as rebellion of God, etc. came directly from Dostoevsky and were not superimposed on the material by me.  —-Jonathan in 2006)

One group of Dostoevsky’s characters, his dreamers, have a very weak or nonexistent sense of the outside world and have, as a substitute, a world of their own creation. Dostoevsky’s concept of the dreamer was very complex and any attempt to define it here would be an oversimplification. A working distinction between dreamers and non-dreamers is that dreamers are people immersed in a world of romantic fantasies. There is a strong relationship between Dostoevsky’s dreamer and the profound egocentric. In Dostoevsky’s writings as a whole, a large number of the profound egocentrics are dreamers, and almost all of his dreamers are profound egocentrics. This relationship I believe to be entirely consistent with the concept of the profound egocentric. The profound egocentric’s intense inner world, and separation from the outside world, creates an ideal environment for dreams, and is a prerequisite for dreamers. In other words, the above characteristics of the profound egocentric lead to a great susceptibility to dreams, and these same characteristics, almost by definition, are basic to the dreamer’s personality. After all, how could a true dreamer not have an intense inner world and a separation from the outside world?

Most profound egocentrics, however, do not appear to be dreamers when we meet them – at least not in Dostoevsky’s romantic sense of the word. Dreaming is the profound egocentric’s second stage of development. When we encounter the profound egocentric, he may have already passed out of that stage of development, though at some point in time he was a dreamer. In one of those later stages, the profound egocentric may have come to regard dreaming as a weak indulgence, and may even be in the process of trying to become a “man of action” or a “moral superman”, philosophical concepts that preclude indulgence in day-dreaming and fantasy. Although the profound egocentric at that stage may not allow himself to indulge in fantasy of the romantic sort, he may be totally absorbed in a world of philosophical theories, intellectualizations and abstract reasoning that may be even further removed from reality (and far more dangerous) than the dream world.

The profound egocentric’s continuing susceptibility to dreams is observable in a variety of ways, but especially in his inability to separate his sleeping dreams and hallucinations from reality. Raskolnikov, for example, after having a nightmare, must ask himself, “Is this still the dream or not?” And “Can this be the dream continuing?” ( Crime and Punishment p. 236-7). Ivan Karamazov is another example of a non-dreamer who cannot separate dream from reality:
It was not a dream…I was asleep last time, but this dream was not a dream…I have dreams now, …yet they are not dreams but reality. I walk about, talk and see…though I am asleep. ( Brothers Karamazov , p. 792)
Still another profound egocentric with the same problem is Yakov Golyadkin, hero of The Double:
…not quite certain whether he was awake or still asleep, whether the things around him were real or the continuation of his chaotic dreams.
Later, Golyadkin must ask himself, “Am I dreaming or is this real?” ( The Double , p. 196). The list goes on; this inseparability of dream and reality appears to be universal to the profound egocentric.
Many profound egocentrics that are non-dreamers are eventually revealed as having once been dreamers. Dolgoruky in The Adolescent is a good example:
During the days of my dreamy Moscow loneliness the seed of the idea appeared in my mind while I was still in the second year of high school and has never left me since. Everything else in my life became subordinated to it. Even before it got hold of me, indeed from my earliest childhood, I’d always lived in a dream world, colored by a certain light, but, after this great all-absorbing idea came to me, my daydreams acquired a certain unity, took on a well-defined shape, and instead of being crazy became rational. ( The Adolescent , p. 13)
To Dostoevsky, however, the distinction between “crazy” and “rational” was purely academic, as I will demonstrate later in my section on reason. Later in The Adolescent, Dolgoruky gives us an explanation of how, exactly, the dreamer becomes a rationalist-monomaniac. We begin to understand that the profound egocentric’s next stage of development is a focusing of many dreams into one dream based on logical premises and rationally derived. Dolgoruky describes the transformation:
I was the happiest when I went to bed at night and could pull the blanket over my head, thus isolating myself from the people around me and from the sounds they made, I became free to re-create my life in a different pattern. Wherever I went, my most extravagant, wild, daydreams went with me, until I discovered my “idea”. Then all my crazy silly longings were transformed into rational aspirations and my wishful thinking, which had been spinning a dreamy romance inside my head, was turned into reasoned thought applicable to real life. Everything merged into one single goal. ( The Adolescent , p. 86)
Dostoevsky himself went through a transformation similar to Dolgoruky’s. Dostoevsky, however, acquired a sense of outside reality while Dolgoruky did not. During the first part of his life, up to his early twenties, Dostoevsky was a dreamer. Then, sometime in the years 1843-1845, Dostoevsky ceased being a dreamer and became infinitely more aware of external reality. One of Dostoevsky’s best biographers describes the turning point:
Up until this moment Dostoevsky had lived in a world of romantic dreams. Far-off lands and distant times, the exotic and heroic had completely captivated him. He was blind to reality, and everything that was mysterious, fantastic, and out-of-the ordinary would lure him into its captivating sphere: the knight’s castles in the novels of Radcliffe and Walter Scott, the tales of Hoffmann, the diabolism in Souilie…Then suddenly his eyes were opened and he understood: there is nothing more fantastic than reality . (Mochulsky, p. 27)
In 1861, Dostoevsky himself described the experience and said, among other things, that “in those precise minutes, my real existence began…” (Mochulsky, p. 27)
Dostoevsky, in a very autobiographical piece for the Petersburg Chronicle, describes the dreamer. Many of the characteristics of his dreamer coincide exactly with the characteristics of the profound egocentric. For example:
They settle themselves for the most part in a deep solitude in inaccessible corners, as though trying to hide themselves from people and from light…Frequently reality produces an onerous impression, one hostile to the dreamer’s heart, and he hastens to withdraw into his own inviolable golden nook…Imperceptibly the talent for real life begins to deaden within him… (Mochulsky, p. 71-72)
We soon become aware that the author is talking about himself, “…His imagination has been set in motion: straightaway an entire story, a tale, a novel is born…” (Mochulsky, p. 72) Fourteen years later the subject comes up again in a collection entitled Petersburg Dreams. Here Dostoevsky abandons the pretense of third person narrative, and tells us about his own life as a dreamer:
And what dreams did I not have in my adolescence…I was so lost in dreams that my whole youth passed by without my ever noticing it… (Mochulsky, p. 72)
In White Nights we find another profound egocentric-dreamer in whose character Dostoevsky makes some autobiographical revelations, “‘I can dream up whole novels, you know…’ He dreams of everything…of being a poet, at first unrecognized later crowned.” Through the same character, a government clerk, we get a long discourse on the agonies of creating art. The character is obviously autobiographical, and we are given a very autobiographical description of the dreamer. Most importantly, the characteristics described by the narrator as being universal to the dreamer are equally universal to the profound egocentric. For example, the recurrent metaphor of the tortoise retreating into its shell is used to describe the dreamer:
A dreamer is, if you want me to define him, not a real human being but a sort of intermediary creature. He usually installs himself in some remote corner, shrinking even from the daylight. And once he’s installed in that corner of his, he grows into it like a snail or at least like that curious thing which is both an animal and a house – the tortoise. ( White Nights , p. 21)
The narrator also gives us a lengthy description of the dreamer’s inability to relate to people. He follows this description of someone with a weak sense of other with a comment on the dreamer’s grip on reality in general:
If fact, sometimes he almost believes that the dream life is no figment of the imagination, no self-deception, no delusion, but something real, actual, existing. ( White Nights , p. 27)
The narrator then applies this to himself and describes the agonies of a life lived inside the mind, and the agony of what Dostoevsky variously describes as “acute consciousness” or “lucidity.”
…for there are moments when I’m overcome by such anguish and despair that…In those moments, I feel that I’ll never have a true life because I feel sure I’ve entirely lost touch with reality; because I feel damned; because in the middle of my fancy-filled nights, I have moments of lucidity that are unbearable! ( White Nights , p. 30)
Dreams are used as substitutes for external reality. Many profound egocentrics’ disintegrated sense of external reality creates a greater dependence and reliance on internal reality, while depriving the profound egocentric of an external frame of reference. This frame of reference cannot exist once the sense of other has disintegrated. Without a sense of other, the profound egocentric is unable to relate to, or understand, other personalities and hence has no frame of reference in which to compare and objectify his own emotions and ideas.
The internal world which the profound egocentric inhabits may be very self-contained and rational in its own sphere. Obviously, however, the internal world becomes totally isolated once the external world has collapsed. Because of this isolation, the internal world must now suffer the same logical analysis that destroyed the outside world.
The profound egocentric logically dissects the outside world until he finally comes to the dead end question – “Is reality real?” Unable to answer that question the profound egocentric retreats into his inner world. The process of logical analysis continues until he reaches another dead end, “How do I know if the internal world is real?”  i.e. “How do I know if I’m insane?” Raskolnikov is a good example of the profound egocentric at that stage:
A dark and tormenting idea was beginning to rear its head, the idea that he was going out of his mind and that he was not capable of reasoning or protecting himself. ( Crime and Punishment , p. 69. For a variation see p. 76)
Ivan Karamazov sums up the problem, “And can one observe that one’s going mad oneself?”
Once the question of sanity has been raised the entire thought process is under doubt, and even “cogito ergo sum” becomes unsatisfying. When that point is reached, the profound egocentric reaches the ultimate dead end – “How do I know I exist?” Not all profound egocentrics will have reached that stage at the point in time in which we encounter them. The fear of existence as illusion is in fact the profound egocentric’s last internal stage of development. Once existence itself has been questioned, the personality must either break down, or go through spiritual rebirth.
The fear of existence as illusion is a recurrent force in Dostoevsky’s writings. Dostoevsky is especially afraid of the nonbeing that determination suggests: that man does not have free will, and that his whole being is reducible to physics, mechanics and the secondary science of biology.
Imagine: inside, in the nerves, in the head _ that is, these nerves are there in the brain…(damn them!) there are sort of little tails, the little tails of those nerves and as soon as they begin quivering…then an image appears…That’s why I see and think, because of those tails, not at all because I’ve got a soul… ( Brothers Karamazov , p. 716)
This fear reaches its highest level of development in Notes From Underground. A large part of the book is spent in an attempt to refute the determinist’s denial of free will and the right to choose anything, no matter how irrational. (See Notes From Underground, chapter 7) The prime motivator of many of Dostoevsky’s characters is a desire to prove to themselves that they are free-willed entities. With this motivation in mind, many of the most inexplicably irrational actions of Dostoevsky’s characters can be explained. The explanation is simple; these irrational actions are done to prove man capable of irrational, non-advantageous behavior and therefore a possessor of free will.
A weakened sense of other, a weak frame of reference, and a growing fear of insanity are the primary motivations for the secondary behavioral symptom which I term “compulsive explanation.” Many profound egocentrics show a compulsive desire to explain, or at least to relate their most bizarre behaviors to others. These profound egocentrics seem to be practicing a kind of phobia-therapy on themselves. In a desperate effort to reduce their fear of the strangeness of their own actions, their separation from others, and the possibility of their own insanity, they constantly repeat the details of their strangest behaviors with the hope of becoming desensitized to them.
In the second chapter of Crime and Punishment Dostoevsky seems to be consciously working with this idea. Raskolnikov, at that point in the book, has just made up his mind to go through with his planned murder. Once he has made that decision, his usual, secretive self suddenly desires companionship. Raskolnikov has become afraid of himself:
Raskolnikov was not used to crowds and, as we have said, had lately avoided all social contacts, but now he suddenly felt drawn to people. Something as it were new had been accomplished in his soul, and with it had come a thirst for society. ( Crime and Punishment , p.
To satisfy this need Raskolnikov goes to a public house. There he meets another creature like himself, Marmeladov, who has already committed a fatal sin. Raskolnikov’s misdeed was only in the planning stage, and so it is Marmeladov that has the greater need to talk. Marmeladov is instinctively drawn to Raskolnikov as a kindred spirit:
It sometimes happens that we find ourselves interested from the first glance in complete strangers, even before we have spoken to them…The avidity with which he seized upon Raskolnikov was such that it seemed as though he too had spoken to nobody for a month…’Young man, I read a certain affliction in your features.’ ( Crime and Punishment , p. 8-13)
Marmeladov proceeds to describe his most immoral and irrational behaviors in a despairing effort to get them off his chest. Marmeladov even encourages his audience to call him a swine, so that he can at least be positively identified with something and put in a category.
After Raskolnikov has gone through with the murder, the compulsive explanation behavior increases dramatically. He goes to public houses and, “felt somehow drawn to talk to everybody.” The behavior intensifies enough that the once secretive Raskolnikov feels compelled to explain the motivations for murder to the investigator, and even hint at his own guilt.
Another clear example of this compulsive explanation behavior is in the first-person narrative of Notes From Underground and The Adolescent. Both narrators pick up their pens in a desperate effort to explain themselves. Both narrators tell us that they will never have their autobiographical accounts published, and yet they are constantly responding to an imaginary audience.
In Notes From Underground one is always conscious of the narrator’s feverish desire to explain himself:
But have I explained anything? How is one to explain this…But I shall explain myself. I shall pursue the matter to the better end! That is why I’ve taken up my pen… ( Notes From Underground , p. 268)
The narrator finally comes to terms with himself and tells us his real motivations in writing. We are told that the written word is,”…more conducive to self-examination” and that he wants to “make a test and see whether it is possible to be completely frank and unafraid of the truth.” (Notes From Underground, p. 122)
The desire to explain himself is also Dolgoruky’s primary motivation in writing his autobiography – The Adolescent. The book opens with these words:
I couldn’t resist: I sat down and started writing the story of my first steps in life, although I could have managed very well without doing so. ( The Adolescent , p. 1)
Ivan Karamazov says it in one sentence; “ I am trying to explain as quickly as possible my essential nature…”
As the profound egocentric’s sense of other weakens, his ability to relate to people in a natural way also weakens. Eventually the profound egocentric relates to people in a purely mechanical way. He no longer reacts spontaneously, but rather operates himself from within. The profound egocentric’s true personality seems trapped inside a hollowed-out puppet. At this stage, the profound egocentric is aware that he is play-acting his way through life, and is only concerned with finding the right role and playing it convincingly. One of the best examples of this is Raskolnikov as he withdraws from human society. Raskolnikov’s outward behavior becomes more and more mechanical and artificial. The narrator describes Raskolnikov as speaking, “…rarely and reluctantly, as if under compulsion or to fulfill an obligation…” (Crime and Punishment, p. 188) Raskolnikov’s sister observes that, “He is asking forgiveness and making friends again, as though it was part of his job, or as though he had got a lesson by heart.” (p. 191) Raskolnikov’s mother also notices, and is described as being “…even more worried than before by his sudden new business-like way of speaking.” (p. 199) Raskolnikov himself, worries after speaking, “Have I done well? Did it seem natural? Wasn’t it too exaggerated? Why did I see ‘women’ like that?” (p. 213)
As described earlier, half of the sense of other is an intuitive realization of an ongoing mental process in others. Many profound egocentrics may be somewhat aware of the existence of other people, but not aware that other people are changeable and freethinking. In this stage the profound egocentric views other people as static, and himself as the only variable in any social situation, and the only entity capable of change. The profound egocentric sees his relationships with other people as a game of chess. Other people are chess pieces that can only react in certain patterns as prescribed by the rules of the game. A bishop can only move as a bishop and a knight only as a knight. In the same way, a mother must react only as a mother and a sister only as a sister. So long as everyone plays their prescribed roles they can all be pleasantly manipulated. The game, however, becomes very difficult when the pieces themselves refuse to obey the rules: “In general, although in my imagination I’ve always managed to handle people pretty well, in real life I have proved rather inept at it.” ( The Adolescent , p. 19)
The profound egocentric’s basic instability creates a need for total stability in others. The profound egocentric tends to create static, stable roles for people, and can genuinely like those people, so long as they are not actually present. Dolgoruky loves and idolizes his father until he actually meets him. Dolgoruky comes to hate his father, not for being what he is, but for not being what he was supposed to be. In the same way, Raskolnikov loves his mother and sister until they are in front of him, changing and reacting independently: “The thought occurred to him that it was only when they were absent that he really loved them.” ( Crime and Punishment , p. 192)
With a weak sense of other, the contents of other people’s minds become great mysteries. Combined with a very basic failure to realize that humanity consists of independent individuals, the profound egocentric is subject to certain kinds of paranoia. The perspective is always “me and them.” The profound egocentric begins automatically thinking in terms of a community mind. Throughout Dostoevsky’s literature we find, “they’re all—at/to/of me.” Raskolnikov wonders:
…oh Lord, tell me just one thing; do they know everything or not? What if they know it all already and were only pretending, mocking me while I lay here and what if they come in now and say that they have known everything for a long time… ( Crime and Punishment , p. 107)
Golyadkin is one of the more obviously paranoid characters. He is always lamenting that, “They’re all plotting against me.” ( The Double , p. 178)
The same paranoia surfaces in extreme self-consciousness. Although the profound egocentric doesn’t particularly worry about what other people look like, he is sure, in his infinite egocentrism, that everyone is minutely examining and ridiculing his appearance. Golyadkin is described as having, “…the impression that all the people inside the house were watching him from the windows, and he felt that he would die then and there if he just turned around.” ( The Double , p. 177)
Many profound egocentrics act, even when absolutely alone, as though they were under a spotlight in front a darkened theatre of hostile faces. The narrator of Notes From Underground feels he is being mocked even as he writes his autobiography in his hole in the ground:
But doesn’t it seem to you gentlemen, that I might be apologizing to you for something? Asking you to forgive me for something? Yes, I’m sure it does… Well, I assure you I don’t care a damn whether it does seem so to you or not… ( Notes From Underground , p. 264-5)
Dolgoruky writing his autobiography feels the same way;
The thought has suddenly struck me that if anyone ever read what I’ve written here, he would burst out laughing at this ridiculous adolescent…
Golyadkin, the hero of The Double, is both paranoid and self-conscious. He has, throughout the novel, the effortless grace and poise of a housewife in curlers and bathrobe, accidentally walking onto a national news show in progress. In the example below, Golyadkin is meeting his doctor for an ordinary appointment:
…having failed to prepare the opening words, which were like stepping stones for him in such cases, he became completely confused; he muttered something that might perhaps have been an apology and, not knowing what to do next, took a chair and sat down.
But realizing immediately that he had sat down without having been invited to do so, he stood up again, hoping thus to retrieve his faux pas. Then vaguely realizing that he had made two faux pas one after the other, he immediately decided to commit third and, smiling brightly, muttered some explanation, then turned beet red, lost the thread of what he was saying, became expressively silent, sat down, and this time didn’t get up again. ( The Double , p. 155)
Another hypersensitive character, Kolya from Brothers Karamazov, is terribly worried about his physical appearance. His physical description, as we objectively learn it from the narrator, is identical to descriptions of Dostoevsky in his youth. (See Brothers Karamazov, p. 646, 652) We do not need to make, however, any parallels to decide whether Dostoevsky himself was self-conscious and paranoid. Biographical data clearly shows us that he was. For example, one biographer relates the following incident:
Turgenev told I. Pavlosky that on one occasion Dostoevsky came into his apartment at the precise moment when all the guests (Belinsky, Ogaryov, Herzen) were laughing at a certain piece of nonsense. He interpreted this as being on his account. He bolted out of the door and for an hour walked about the streets in the freezing cold. Later when Turgenev chanced to find him, he exclaimed: “My God! It’s just impossible! Where ever I go, everywhere they are laughing at me.” (Mochulsky, p. 61)
The highly intelligent, turbulent, and inner-directed mind of the profound egocentric is especially prone to, and often distressed by, excessive mental static. I’m defining mental static as thoughts, memories of sensations and images not willfully conjured by the individual. Dostoevsky describes the phenomenon very effectively:
He could not think. His mind held ideas, or fragments of ideas, disconnected and incoherent images – the faces of the people he had known as a child or seen once and remembered again, the belfry of the Church of the Ascension, the billiard table in some public house, with an officer playing at it, the smell of cigars in a basement tobacco shop, a tavern, a black stair case, sloppy with dishwater and strewn with eggshells, the Sunday sound of bells borne in from somewhere… all changing and whirling in dizzy spirals. Sometimes an image pleased him and he tried to cling to it, but it would fade away. ( Crime and Punishment , p. 231)
This mental static is not blocked out by even the most traumatic events, and Dostoevsky seems obsessed with the idea of mental static pervading the mind of the prisoner being led to the scaffold; very likely a result of his own experience. (In 1849 Dostoevsky was sentenced to death. The sentence was altered to four years in penal servitude, but not until Dostoevsky and twenty others went through every formality of an execution.) In Brothers Karamazov and Crime and Punishment this idea occurs repeatedly. For example:
At the most terrible moments of a man’s life, for instance when he is being led to execution, he remembers just such trifles. He will forget anything but some green roof that has flashed past him on the road, or a jackdaw on a cross – that he will remember. ( Brothers Karamazov , p. 876)
In The Idiot there is a full two-page description of a man approaching the scaffold and all the irrelevant thoughts going through his head. Clearly, this must have been at least indirectly generated from Dostoevsky’s own mock execution. For the purpose of this paper, these examples demonstrate that Dostoevsky himself was prone to excessive mental static. His obsession with the subject, however, probably had more to do with the religious question which being bound by earthly thoughts before death suggests.
Dostoevsky’s understanding of thought static and the true, disjointed nature of consciousness in general, was sophisticated enough that he developed something very closely approximating stream of consciousness long before Joyce, Proust or Woolf. There are at least two examples of this in The Double:
That gentleman is wearing a wig, Golyadkin decided, and so if that wig were pulled off, he’d have a head just as bare as the palm of my hand.
Having made that important discovery, Golyadkin remembered the Arab emirs who, under the green turbans they wear to show their family ties with the prophet Mohammed, have equally bare, hairless heads that would be exposed if their turbans were removed. Then, probably through a peculiar association of ideas, Golyadkin passed from the Arabs to the Turks and from the Turks to Turkish slippers, which made him think that Andrei Filipovich’s shoes looked more like slippers than shoes. ( The Double , p. 180. For another example see p. 286)
One of Dostoevsky’s critics points out an even better example in The Meek One:
Now as long as she’s here, everything is still all right: I come near and look at her every minute; but, tomorrow she will be carried away – and how shall I remain alone then? Now she is on the table in the hall – I put two card tables together – while the coffin will be here tomorrow, a white one, white gros-de-Napables, but then, this is not the point…I keep walking and want to explain it to myself. It’s six hours already that I’ve sought to explain it and I’m still not able to gather my thoughts into focus. The thing is that I keep walking, walking, walking…This now is how it was, I will simply relate it in order (order!). (Mochulsky, p. 548)
At the risk of making a generalization, all profound egocentrics are highly intelligent. Some of Dostoevsky’s profoundly egocentric characters, such as the narrator of Notes From Underground, are among the most intelligent in all literature. In Notes From Underground Dostoevsky expresses the idea that high intelligence in a moral vacuum will evolve into profound egocentricity or as Dostoevsky expresses it, “the man of heightened consciousness.” Every quality Dostoevsky ascribes to the “man of heightened consciousness” coincides exactly with the profound egocentric. This point will be demonstrated later in the paper when I do an individual study of the profound egocentric in Notes From Underground.
Are all profound egocentrics highly intelligent? To use circular reasoning they are by definition people of great intellectual depth. To answer the question in a more meaningful manner, we must decide if there are characters that show signs of being profound egocentrics and yet are not highly intelligent. Two possibilities that might occur to the reader of Dostoevsky are Golyadkin, the hero of The Double, and Dimitri Karamazov. In the first case, the character does not appear especially intelligent, and in the second, he is clearly described as not intelligent.
The confusion in the first case is the result of the personality disintegration of Golyadkin; Golyadkin One is just a projection of Golyadkin’s surface image of himself. All that is humble, respectable and average is projected into Golyadkin One. All that is ruthless, shrewd and manipulative is projected in the “Double” – Golyadkin Two. The intelligence of Golyadkin Two, however, is still not a true reflection of a reintegrated Golyadkin. The intelligence of the true Golyadkin is even more than the sum of the two parts, because they are only surface projections. Somewhere there must be a third entity that maintains the existence of Golyadkin One and Two. We may not find high intelligence in the individual fragments of a disintegrated personality, but when we analyze the psychological phenomenon of Golyadkin as a whole, we must conclude that such a disintegration could only have happened to the most intelligent and complex of personalities.
Dimitri Karamazov, on the other hand, clearly is not very intelligent, and yet he displays several of the symptoms of the profound egocentric. Dimitri’s symptoms, however, are the result of infantile egocentrism under stress, and not a profound egocentrism. Dimitri is so wrapped up in his own gratification that he assumes that providing for him is everyone’s goal in life. Mitya (Dimitri) instinctively expects everyone to respond to his emotional temperament. When he suddenly decides to see a certain peasant in the middle of the night, he is actually outraged to find him sleeping and not waiting for him, Mitya, in breathless anticipation:
What was insufferably humiliating was that, after leaving things of importance and making such sacrifices, he, Mitya, utterly worn out, should with business of such urgency be standing over this dolt on whom his whole fate depended, while he snored as though there was nothing the matter, as though he’d dropped from another planet. ( Brothers Karamazov , p. 457)
Infantile egocentrism, probably extended from childhood, would be the most likely stage of Dimitri’s development, not profound egocentrism. Dimitri Karamazov has the necessary, morally decadent environment, but he does not have enough intellectual depth to develop into a true profound egocentric.
Self-examination and self-awareness of a very flawed personality, and of a very impure soul, leads the profound egocentric to a great deal of self-hatred, self-destructiveness and inverted bitterness. This too, seems to be a universal characteristic of the profound egocentric.
Much of the self-depreciation is really a verbal form of self-flagellation, in the full medieval sense of the word. The repetitiousness of the language in these self-depreciations, and their non-communication of any new information, seems to suggest that they are the verbal equivalent of multiple whip-snaps: “I am a wretch, wretch, wretch, wretch!” (Brothers Karamazov, p. 712) Raskolnikov, Golyadkin and the narrator of Notes From Underground seem the most fond of verbal masochism. As Raskolnikov says, “The fact is I said that mostly to torment myself…”
Inverted bitterness and internal masochism are also universal to the profound egocentric. The profound egocentric seems unable to resist dredging up old memories of embarrassments and humiliations and of going over a current list of weaknesses. Raskolnikov constantly reproaches himself: “the bitterness was directed against himself; he remembered his own ‘cowardice’ with scorn and shame.” (Crime and Punishment, p. 303) The narrator of Notes From Underground has frequent bitter tirades against himself, often referring to himself in the third person as a mouse:
Of course, the only thing left for it to do is to shrug its puny shoulders and, affecting a scornful smile, scurry ignominiously to its mouse-hole. And there in its repulsive evil smelling nest, the downtrodden, ridiculed mouse plunges immediately into a cold, poisonous and most important – never-ending hatred. For forty year (The narrator (we are already told) is forty years old.) , it will remember the humiliation in all its ignominious details, each time adding some new point, more abject still, endlessly taunting and tormenting itself. Although ashamed of its own thoughts the mouse will remember everything, go over it again and again, then think up possible new humiliations. ( Notes From Underground , p. 97)
The superior intelligence, intellectual development, and awareness of the profound egocentric lead him to perhaps his most basic flaw – pride. The profound egocentric’s intense pride can coexist with the worst self-depreciations and humiliations. Pride, in fact, is so inherent to the profound egocentric that it can only be constrained by the total breakdown of his personality.
In Crime and Punishment, pride is directly linked, more than any other force, to Raskolnikov’s fall. Dostoevsky in his notebooks for Crime and Punishment writes, “In his image in the novel is expressed the idea of extraordinary pride, arrogance and contempt for all society…” Right from the start we are made aware of Raskolnikov’s fatal pride:
He was…superciliously proud and reserved. It seemed to some of his fellow students that he looked down on them all as children, as if he had outdistanced them in knowledge, development and ideas, and that he considered their interests and convictions beneath him. ( Crime and Punishment , p. 44)
Pride is what leads Raskolnikov’s intellectualizing mind to the concept of the moral superman, and then to murder itself. Pride is also what prevents Raskolnikov’s spiritual regeneration. Suicide is the ultimate act of pride for many, and Raskolnikov is driven to suicide out of pride. Raskolnikov, however, is saved from doing himself in by an even greater form of pride.
And it was to escape the shame that I wanted to drown myself, Dunya, but the thought came to me, when I was already standing on the bank, that if I had hitherto considered myself strong then the shame should not frighten me now… Is that pride, Dunya?
Yes, Rodya, it is pride. ( Crime and Punishment , p. 438)
Pride is described as causing his fall, and pride is described as preventing his repentance and regeneration:
I wonder if my spirit will really grow so humble …that I shall whine and whimper before people, branding myself a criminal with every word I utter. Yes, exactly, exactly! That is why they are deporting me now, that is what they want…Look at all these scurrying about the streets, and every one of them is a scoundrel and a criminal by his very nature, and worse still an idiot! But try to save me from exile and they all go mad with righteous indignation! Oh, how I hate them all! ( Crime and Punishment , p. 440)
Pride was something Raskolnikov’s character was built around and that he could not function without. When he is sent to Siberia we are told, “…he was not ashamed of his shaven head or his fetters; his pride was deeply wounded, and it was the wound to his pride that made him fall ill.” (Crime and Punishment, p. 458)
Pride is a quality that seems universal to Dostoevsky’s profound egocentrics. Pride is something that comes so naturally to the profound egocentric that it seems virtually inevitable. Even during the worst self-depreciations the profound egocentric cannot divest himself of pride:
I’m going to pieces anyhow. I’m becoming nothing but an old doormat, but that doesn’t prevent me from going around holding forth about my self-respect and talking about saving my honor! ( The Double , p. 239)
Pride can so overwhelm the profound egocentric that he may be able to recognize pride in others but be unaware of it in himself:
I ended up with the impression that it was not high society that had turned its back on this proud man but rather he who had banned these people from his presence, so great was his air of independence. What actually worried me was whether he really had the right to look down upon the world with that proud air! I had to find out the truth and find it out very quickly, for I had come here to judge that man! I was still keeping my secret power from him, as I had to decide first whether to accept or reject him. ( The Adolescent , p. 17)
The profound egocentric may not even be able to escape through religious submission:
They choose God so as not to submit to their fellow men without of course acknowledging the underlying reason, namely, that it’s less humiliating to submit to God. Some of these people become ardently religious, or rather thirst ardently for religion. But then they mistake their desire for faith itself, so some of them are bound to be disappointed in the end. ( The Adolescent , p. 59)
Understanding pride, realizing its destructiveness and recognizing it in himself will still not cure the profound egocentric of all its effects. Dostoevsky was the ideal example. He knew everything there was to know about pride, was aware of it in himself, and yet could no nothing about it. Dostoevsky wrote in a letter to his brother that, “There is a terrible defect in my personality, a boundless self-love and vanity .” (Mochulsky, p. 53) Pride is so very basic to the profound egocentric’s personality structure and mental perspective, that he cannot by his own powers rid himself of it. Unable to escape pride, the profound egocentric, for that reason alone, is in great spiritual danger. The profound egocentric must humble himself before God to be saved, but it is only through the grace of God and spiritual rebirth that the profound egocentric’s personality can be restructured and that he can be capable of genuine humility.
Because of the overwhelming flow of contradictory thought and ideas in the mind of the profound egocentric, and the excessive use of reasoning (the kind that can find only as many reasons for doing something as against it), the profound egocentric feels or suspects that he is incapable of decisive action. Raskolnikov tells us, “…I am talking too much. That’s why I don’t act, because I am always talking. Or perhaps I talk so much because I can’t act.” (Crime and Punishment, p. 2) Dolgoruky talks about “this sickening wishy-washiness of mine” and tells us that “in general, all my life I’ve been slow to take action.” (The Adolescent, p.26, 118) The narrator of Notes From Underground explains his inability to act in terms of the profound egocentric in general:
…the direct, the inevitable and the legitimate result of consciousness is to make all actions impossible, or – to put it differently – consciousness leads to thumb-twiddling…all plain men and men of action are active only because they are dull-witted and mentally undeveloped…owing to their arrested mental development they mistake the nearest and secondary causes for primary causes and in this way persuade themselves much more easily and quickly than other people that they have found a firm basis for whatever business they have had in hand and, as a result, they are no longer worried…Where am I to get the basis from? Where am I to find the primary cause to lean against? I am constantly exercising my powers of thought and consequently, every primary cause within me at once draws another to itself, one still more primary, and so on ad infinitum. That, in fact, is the basis of every sort of consciousness and analysis. ( Notes From Underground , p. 276)
In other words, the profound egocentric’s thought process, by its nature, is incapable of being decisive.
The fear of indecisiveness is very dangerous because it leaves the profound egocentric highly susceptible to ideas or systems of thought that allow for action and decisiveness. Raskolnikov’s desire to prove himself a moral superman is driven on by a gnawing fear that he is incapable of decisiveness, let alone Napoleonic decisiveness. Many profound egocentrics want to be “men of action” and are so anxious to get out of the rut of indecision that they are willing to accept any moral compromise.
Without even making any moral compromise, the state of indecisiveness itself is an indication of spiritual decay in at least two ways. First, the feeling that decisive action could and should come from the reasoning capacities of man is an act of terrible pride. Secondly, the reliance on reasoning is a deliberate suppression of the directions provided by the heart. The reliance on reason combined with the inter-related sin of pride are the reasons for the profound egocentric’s great spiritual jeopardy.
The basic immorality of reason is one of Dostoevsky’s most recurrent themes. Dostoevsky always reminds us that reason can prove and disprove at the same time. Anything that relates to fact, science or reason is endlessly described as cutting both ways. Facts are fine but “…evidence, you know, old man, cuts both ways for the most part.” Science is fine but, “the point is all this damned psychology cuts both ways.” (Crime and Punishment, p. 287, 383) It is the inability of reason to find truth that causes the profound egocentric’s indecisiveness.
The use of reason leads the profound egocentric to abstract philosophy, a realization that nothing can be definitely known and a discovery of many ideas and principals in contradiction to the existence of God and Christian teachings. The profound egocentric’s ability to reason, itself, leads to pride and feelings of superiority.
Reasoning also causes the profound egocentric to live life through abstract philosophy rather than through the heart. It is impossible, according to Dostoevsky, to lead a successful life through reason because man is not a rational animal. The character Lebezyatnikov in Crime and Punishment is a satiric mouthpiece for the naïve way of thinking, characteristic of social engineer types, that presumes man is a rational creature that need only be shown the most advantageous course of action to live in eternal happiness:
…if you convince a man logically that he has nothing to cry for he will stop crying…do you know that in Paris they have been doing serious experiments on the possibility of curing the mad by the use of nothing but logical persuasion? A professor there, who died recently, a serious scientist, thought they could be cured in this way. His basic idea was that there is no specific organic disorder in lunatics, but that madness is, so to speak, a logical mistake, a mistake of judgment, and incorrect view of things. ( Crime and Punishment , p. 358)
Lebezyatnikov, like Raskolnikov, tries to apply reason to human problems. According to Dostoevsky, any system that is derived purely from reason and is applied to human affairs is innately evil. Logical systems designed to govern the affairs of men (like socialism), are, no matter how beneficial and humanitarian they may seem, as intrinsically evil as Raskolnikov’s idea and action. The fact that Raskolnikov’s system of thinking had murder of an old woman as a corollary is absolutely irrelevant. Raskolnikov reasons,
…how was my idea more stupid than any of the other ideas and theories that have sprung up and multiplied like weeds all over the world, ever since the world existed? One need only look at the matter with a broad and completely independent mind, free from all the common influences, for my ideas not to seem so very…strange. ( Crime and Punishment , p. 459)
If Raskolnikov’s reasoning had led to the conclusion that he should spend his life helping retarded children, it would still be just as much of a rebellion against God. What damns Raskolnikov, like so many of the other profound egocentrics in Dostoevsky, is one of the supreme acts of pride – deciding human reasoning can discover moral truths. The profound egocentric’s use of reason is what brings his ultimate spiritual downfall. The investigator, Porfiry Petrovich, sums up the profound egocentric’s problem.
…you my dear Rodion Romanovich (excuse an old man), are still a young man, in your first youth, so to speak, and therefore you esteem the human intellect above all things, like all young people. Abstract reasoning and the play of wit tempt you astray.” ( Crime and Punishment , p. 288)
What must be substituted for reason is direct, unquestioning faith. Dostoevsky writes in his notebook for Crime and Punishment, “The characters of arithmetic kill, and direct faith saves.” (Crime and Punishment, p. 474) Direct faith must come from the heart, not from the intellect or from worldly evidence. Ivan Karamazov’s internal demon uses the truth to bring Ivan to despair over his lack of direct faith, “…what’s the good of believing, especially material proofs. Thomas believed, not because he saw Christ risen, but because he wanted to believe, before he saw.” (Brothers Karamazov, p. 774) Alyosha explains to Ivan how life should be led:
“Love life more than the meaning of it?”
“Certainly, love it, regardless of logic as you say, it must be regardless of logic, and it’s only then one will understand the meaning of it.” (Brothers Karamazov, p. 274)
The profound egocentric’s problem is that he follows his head and not his heart. The profound egocentric’s very personality is a rebellion against God. The profound egocentric is, after all, the creator and occupant of his own world, with its own independently arrived-at moral values.
Raskolnikov’s spiritual salvation comes about only when he stops thinking about life and living internally, and starts feeling life and responding directly. Dostoevsky describes the new Raskolnikov:
…he could not think long or coherently of anything or concentrate his attention on any idea, and indeed he was not consciously reasoning at all; he could only feel. Life had taken the place of logic and something quite different must be worked out in his mind. ( Crime and Punishment , p. 464)
The transformation we see above, however, is the ultimate failure of Crime and Punishment. In an earlier version of the book, Dostoevsky had Raskolnikov commit suicide. In the final version he doesn’t fare much better. The very basis of Raskolnikov’s personality is destroyed. The profound egocentric cannot stop thinking any more than he can stop breathing. Raskolnikov is not regenerated or reborn but simply written out of the book.
One could argue that it was Dostoevsky’s sincere belief that, through the grace of God, a complete personality breakdown and rebirth is possible. I have no doubt that this was Dostoevsky’s belief, and I am not making a judgment on the validity of the concept of rebirth. What is significant for the purpose of this paper is that Dostoevsky had no faith in Raskolnikov’s transformation.
There are at least four indications that Dostoevsky was not being honest with himself about Raskolnikov’s transformation. First, as we approach Raskolnikov’s regeneration the book becomes increasingly third person and remote. The narrator that we are scarcely conscious of previously, is suddenly moving towards the foreground and Raskolnikov towards the background. Second, we notice that Raskolnikov’s final inspirational dream is not organic and ambiguous like all the previous dreams, but strikingly artificial and direct. The dream is really not a dream, but a philosophical metaphor, and obviously the creation of a conscious mind. Third, Dostoevsky tells us in his closing paragraph that there is, “…the gradual renewal of a man, of his gradual regeneration, of his slow progress from one world to another…,” but Raskolnikov’s transformation is not slow or gradual, it is abrupt and total. On one page, Raskolnikov is Raskolnikov, the profound egocentric, and on the next page he is his antithesis – a divine idiot. Fourth and finally, after the turning point is reached, we are given no realistic examples of the new Raskolnikov’s behavior, and in fact, the book ends fourteen lines later.
The spiritual fall the profound egocentric goes through is inevitable, but so is an awareness and dissatisfaction with his spiritual state. The profound egocentric’s spiritual turmoil becomes all-consuming. Ivan Karamazov’s internal demon advises him, “…hesitation, suspense, conflict between belief and disbelief – is sometimes such torture to a conscientious man, such as you are, that it’s better to hang oneself at once.” (Brothers Karamazov, p. 784) The most tormenting awareness, for the profound egocentric, may be an awareness of the good that is still within his soul. The profound egocentric can be driven to despair over the realization of his not having actualized his potential for good. The narrator of Notes From Underground describes that sort of despair:
I never could become a spiteful man. I was always conscious of innumerable elements in me which were absolutely contrary to that. I felt them simply swarming in me all my life and asking to come out, but I wouldn’t let them. They tormented me to the point of making me ashamed of myself… ( Notes From Underground , p. 265)
Spiritual turmoil, however, is infinitely better than spiritual apathy. The profound egocentric’s dissatisfaction and awareness of the disorder in his own soul is a major step forward. What is more subtle, however, is that this spiritual self-awareness can lead nowhere by itself. Spiritual self-awareness is once again an internal exploration; an exploration that will not in itself find God and that will not by itself do anything for the profound egocentric. The only thing this self-exploration can do is make the profound egocentric aware that his soul is in a state that he, himself, can never rectify. After that point the profound egocentric must humble himself before God, beg for forgiveness and be reborn.
If the profound egocentrism does not take the final religious step, however, the spiritual self-awareness can become the most destructive force in his personality. A self-awareness of the blackness within his own soul and no channel for expunging it leads the profound egocentric to think depravity a necessary result of his nature, make no effort to restrain it, and despair completely.
The profound egocentric’s ultimate spiritual problem is that he approaches everything internally. Dostoevsky, in a letter to his brother, says of himself that, “The exterior must keep a steady balance with the interior . Otherwise, in the absence of exterior phenomena, the interior will assume too dangerous an upper hand.” (Mochulsky, p. 75) Dostoevsky does not believe man can find salvation inside of himself. The profound egocentric’s internal journey takes him farther and farther from God and the truth. The profound egocentric must break out of himself and destroy his own ego to be at one with God.
The characteristics and behaviors of the profound egocentric differ widely in degree. These differences in degree can be roughly explained by the consideration of five variables and five stages of development.
The first variable is intelligence. Profound egocentrism requires high intelligence, but some profound egocentrics may be more or less intelligent than others. Generally, the greater the intelligence the greater the complexity and magnitude of symptoms. The second variable is intellectual development – how much thinking the profound egocentric has done, and how much reason and philosophy have distorted his mind. The third variable is spiritual state. There is a direct relationship between the intensity of most of the symptoms and spiritual turmoil. The fourth variable is environmental stress. Raskolnikov and Ivan, for example, are under great environmental stress while the narrator of Notes From Underground and Dolgoruky are recalling events in relative tranquility. The fifth variable is stage of development. The intensity of the symptoms, and the variety and type of symptoms are greatly affected by the profound egocentric’s stage of development.
The five stages of development reflect increasing intellectualization, abstraction, detachment from reality and pride. The first stage of development is infantile egocentrism. This is egocentrism without reason or intellectualization. The second stage of development is the dream world. Here thought and creative mental effort cause a withdrawal from the world and an immersion into romantic fantasy. The profound egocentric in this stage, however, dwells more upon creative thought and mental imagery than abstract reasoning. Most significantly, the profound egocentric at this stage has not yet tried to apply reason to questions or morality.
The third stage of development is the period of the idea. This stage is marked by a total absorption in abstract reasoning and the creation or discovery of complex logical concepts. A monomania involving one idea or system of thought will usually dominate this stage. Raskolnikov’s moral superman, Dolgoruky’s, “idea” and possibly Ivan’s Grand Inquisitor are all examples.
The fourth stage of development I term doubt and breakdown. This stage of development is marked by a destructive inversion of reason. At this stage there are no new ideas created and the old ones are being doubted or destroyed. This process of doubting, disproving and destroying eventually carries over to all levels of the profound egocentric’s being. As the pieces of the abstract, intellectual world of the profound egocentric are removed, he must retreat further and further into his own being. The profound egocentric then goes through the process of doubting the reality of the outside world, doubting the reality of his inner world (his sanity) and finally doubting his very existence. The profound egocentric can no longer resolve himself and there must be a complete breakdown.
The breakdown can result in suicide or complete insanity, or it can result in the fifth and final stage of development – regeneration. Through the power of faith, and the grace of God, the personality is rebuilt with emphasis on direct feelings and the heart, and a de-emphasis on reason.
Notes From Underground merits individual consideration because it represents Dostoevsky’s most developed profound egocentric, and because it contains Dostoevsky’s most ambitious attempt to explain his “underground men” as his critics call the, “men of heightened consciousness” as Dostoevsky calls them and profound egocentrics as I have, perhaps too clinically, defined them.
(I have decided to analyze the book in its own order to preserve something of the flow of ideas and system of development in the original.)
Chapter I :   Dostoevsky begins Notes From Underground, with a long footnote that explains that people like the narrator (profound egocentrics), are the natural result of a morally decadent society. Profound egocentrism to Dostoevsky was a disease that highly intelligent men in a moral vacuum are susceptible to. Dostoevsky explains that,
…people like the author of these notes may, and indeed must, exist in our society, if we think of the circumstances under which that society has been formed. (p. 90)
The narrator begins by comparing the profound egocentric to the “man of action.” The man of action is simple where the profound egocentric is mind-bogglingly complex, stupid where he is highly intelligent, a one-dimensional, one-track thinker where he is a multi-dimensional one and above all decisive while he is indecisive. (In 2006 I can’t help but be reminded of George W. Bush who calls himself “the decider” and who brags, like his father, that he doesn’t psychoanalyze himself and that, “I only look in the mirror when I shave.”  He has also bragged that he doesn’t think about history because, “I’m the guy out there making history.”)  In the narrator’s own words:
…an intelligent man cannot turn himself into anything…only a fool can make anything he wants out of himself…an intelligent man of the nineteenth century is bound to be a spineless creature, while the man of character, the man of action, is, in most cases, of limited intelligence. (p. 92)
Chapter II : The narrator discusses the agonies of “acute consciousness” or “lucidity” (as it is variously translated), which the profound egocentric by his very nature must suffer from:
I swear that too great a lucidity is a disease, a true, full-fledged disease. For everyday needs, the average person’s awareness is more than sufficient, and it is about a half or a quarter of that of the unhappy nineteenth-century intellectual, particularly if he’s unfortunate enough to live in Petersburg, the most abstract and premeditated city on earth (there are premeditated and unpremeditated cities), The extent of consciousness at the disposal of what may be termed the spontaneous people and the men of action is sufficient. (p. 93)
In the discussion of lucidity the narrator mentions the importance of Petersburg. Petersburg is the ideal environment and reflection of the profound egocentric. The city was an artificial creation of man (it was conceived on paper before construction), and is the ideal physical representation of man’s world, set up as a rebellion against God. Dostoevsky’s descriptions of Petersburg’s decay and decadence are reflections of the moral and spiritual decay of Petersburg society. Petersburg is the only place the profound egocentric can feel at home and is where almost all of Dostoevsky’s writing takes place. The narrator insists on living in Petersburg, despite all the inconvenience, and yet he isn’t sure why:
They tell me that the Petersburg climate is bad for me and that, with my miserable income, it’s a very expensive place to live. I know all that myself. I know it better than all my would-be advisers. But I’m going to stay in Petersburg ! I won’t leave! I won’t leave because…
Ah, it’s really all the same whether I go or stay. (p. 93)
In the same chapter, the narrator tells us that when he is most aware of the “sublime and the beautiful” he is most capable of debauchery. An awareness of what is good and beautiful makes the profound egocentric aware of how fallen he is by contrast. Also, the narrator’s awareness of the sublime and the beautiful indicates something of those qualities inside himself. The narrator then subjects himself to the despair that results from contemplating potential for good that was never actualized:
Now tell me this: why, just when I was most capable of being conscious of every refinement of the “good and the beautiful,” as they used to put it once upon a time,…were there moments when I…did such ugly things – things that everyone does probably, but that I precisely did at moments when I was aware that they shouldn’t be done.
The more conscious I was of “the good and the beautiful,” the deeper I sank into the mud, and the more likely I was to remain mired in it. (p. 94)
Directly following this the narrator makes one of his attempts to describe his “strange, elusive pleasure.” This pleasure we are led to understand is, “so subtle, so evasive, that even slightly limited people, or people who simply have strong nerves, won’t understand the first thing about it.” The pleasure is extremely elusive and hard to understand as the narrator admits, but it is, when we analyze its nature, of great moral significance.
I mentioned before, in my section on the collapse of internal reality, that Dostoevsky was terribly afraid of determinism. Much of Notes From Underground is a struggle with the deterministic concept of man. This pleasure, ironically, results from an unconscious embracing of deterministic thinking. If man has free will, then he is guilty of everything wrong doing. If man does not have free will, as determinism insists, then he has no need to blame himself.
The narrator, by convincing himself that a profound egocentric, by his very nature, must have a moral fall, is absolving himself of guilt. The pleasure results from the easing of self-reproach and a stoic acceptance of faults:
I derived pleasure precisely from the blinding realization of my degradation; because I felt that I was already up against the wall; that it was horrible but couldn’t be otherwise; that there was no way out and it was no longer possible to make myself into a different person; that even if there were still enough time and faith left to become different, I wouldn’t want to change myself…Finally, the most important point is that there’s a set of fundamental laws to which heightened consciousness is subject so that there’s no changing oneself or for that matter, doing anything about it. Thus as a result of heightened consciousness a man feels that it’s all right if he’s bad as long as he knows it – (p. 95)
One further revelation made in this chapter is that the narrator is self-conscious and is actually aware of his own self-consciousness: “I, for instance, am horribly sensitive. I’m suspicious and easily offended, like a dwarf or a hunchback.” (p. 95) From the above, we can see another example of the profound egocentric reaching self-awareness and yet not benefiting from it in the least.
Chapter IV: In this chapter more examples are given of the narrator’s self-consciousness, self-awareness and self-hatred. The inseparable relationship between the three becomes clearer:
Of course my jokes are in poor taste, inappropriate, and confused; they reveal my lack of security. But that is because I have no respect for myself. After all, how can a man of my lucidity of perception respect himself?
Part II:        The narrator flashes back to an incident that happened sixteen years ago. He describes himself as being at the time, “painfully sensitive and complex, as a man of this age should be.” And leading the “gloomy, solitary existence of a recluse. I stayed away from people, avoided even speaking to them, and kept more and more to my hole. At the office, I avoided looking at anyone; I realized that others regarded me…so, at least, I felt – viewed me with a sort of disgust.” (p. 124-125) He goes on to say that he was worried that, “I was unlike everyone else, and they were unlike me. ‘I’m all alone while there are a lot of them.’ (p. 126) The narrator then reveals that he was a dreamer at the time:
I had an escape that made everything bearable; I took refuge in the “sublime and the beautiful” – in my dreams of course.
I gave myself over entirely to dreaming – dreaming away for three months on end, huddled in my corner. (p. 136)
Chapter X :    At the end of Notes From Underground we see a conflict between subject and author again as in Crime and Punishment but this time with the author trying to suppress the reality of the subject. Dostoevsky wrote Notes From Underground with the idea in mind of demonstrating the decadence and hopeless depravity of the profound egocentric or man of “heightened consciousness.” A happy ending, therefore, or even a slightly hopeful one, would be self-defeating (of his conscious intention). The character, however, has taken on enough life on his own that he goes beyond the purpose assigned to him in the book. The character, at the very end, begins to show signs of regeneration. Dostoevsky tries to suppress those signs, but fortunately, he’s not successful.
When we reach the end of Notes From Underground the narrator has found no answers and discovered no path to follow. Somehow, though, we get a feeling of hope. Through all the depravity, humiliation, bitterness and cynicism there is a light. Where that light comes from is hard to say. I think Notes From Underground is autobiographical enough that it is Dostoevsky’s own hope for himself. There is no hint at the end of the novel of the kind of hope and rebirth Raskolnikov supposedly found. There is, however, a feeling of a pause for reflection, a realization of all the dead ends, and perhaps one more attempt to find the right direction.
When the narrator winds down his account with “But that’s enough, I’ve had enough of writing these Notes From Underground.” We get the feeling that he has gone as far as he can go inside of himself. He’s decided to stop writing and perhaps he will now head in  a new direction. Dostoevsky apparently attempts to squelch the hopeful tone at the end of the book with an editorial comment, “Actually the notes of this lover of paradoxes do not end here. He couldn’t resist and went on writing. But we are of the opinion that one might just as well stop here.” The implication, of course, is that the character never resolves himself. This editorial comment, however, is a contradiction of the instinctive emotional feeling that the end generates.
I think Dostoevsky could have spiritually resolved this character and given him a new faith without the character losing his identity. Dostoevsky, while writing this novel, was at a very low point in his life, but he managed to pull through. Maybe Notes From Underground was the inner reflection that he needed as well as its narrator. It is my feeling that Dostoevsky put so much of himself into Notes From Underground, and so much of the negative side of his personality, that once he stepped outside the character, he immediately hated him and condemned him. Dostoevsky shows the character’s potential for spiritual regeneration through himself. Dostoevsky never stopped thinking about life and just feeling, and he never stopped doubting, but he did find a faith, no matter how shaky it was. That is the type of regeneration the narrator of Notes From Underground and the profound egocentrics are capable of. The essential beauty of Dostoevsky’s writings is the realization that even for these twisted, “men from underground,” submerged in their own reflections and bitterness, there is still hope.
The profound egocentric is by no means a phenomenon unique to Dostoevsky. Profound egocentrics are among the most developed characters in all literature. Two examples that readily come to mind are Hamlet and J. Alfred Prufrock.
I am hardly the first person to point out the relationship between many of Dostoevsky’s characters and Hamlet. Dostoevsky, himself, constantly compared several of his characters (all profound egocentrics) to Hamlet and so do his critics. There are references to “contemporary Hamletanism” in Dostoevsky’s characters, and the natural association between Hamlet the profound egocentric appears strong.
Hamlet is, first of all, a product of a morally decadent society, as all profound egocentrics seem to be. Hamlet’s line, “The time is out of joint” is used by one of Dostoevsky’s best critics as the most concise possible description of the kind of environment that results in profound egocentrics,
The words of Hamlet: “The time is out of joint” could have served as an epigraph to the novel. Mankind has abandoned God and been left alone on earth. Together with the idea of God the unity of the world is also out of joint. Mankind no longer forms a single family, all have been separated; fraternal communion has been replaced by hostility, harmony by disorder. (Mochulsky, p. 505)
When Hamlet refers to Denmark as a prison, he is referring to much more than his physical entrapment. He is in a moral trap, as are so many of Dostoevsky’s characters. The moral dilemma that he faces in Denmark is only the worst of many he must face in life,
Hamlet:           Denmark ’s a prison.
Rosencrantz:     Then is the world one.
Hamlet:     A goodly one; in which there are many confines, wards and dungeons, Denmark being one o’ the worst. (Act II: Sc II, lines 249-53)
Hamlet shows many other characteristics of profound egocentrism besides a morally decadent background. He is constantly berating himself for his failure to take action. This was one quality that Dostoevsky identified with especially. In 1838 he wrote to his brother, “…How fainthearted is that creature man! Hamlet! Hamlet!” Just as the man from underground is almost incapable of revenge because of his conscience combined with reasoning, so, too, is Hamlet,
Thus conscience does make cowards of us all;
And thus the native hue of resolution
Is sicklied over with pale cast of thought,
And enterprises of great pitch and moment,
With this regard their currents turn awry,
And lose the name of action.
(Act III: Sc I, lines 83-88)
Hamlet eventually tries to rebel against his own indecisiveness and become a man of action , “O, from this time forth, /let my thoughts be bloody, or be nothing worth!”
Hamlet reproaches himself for being a “John-a-dreams”, but he is basically the profound egocentric in the doubt-breakdown stage. He has no hope of getting anywhere in this world:
How weary, stale, flat and unprofitable,
Seem to me all the uses of this world!
(Act I: Sc II, lines 133-4)
J. Alfred Prufrock (“The love song of J. Alfred Prufrock” a poem by T. S. Eliot) is another human byproduct of a morally decadent society, another “Waste Land.” He is an obvious example of the profound egocentric in the doubt-breakdown stage. He has no direction and nowhere to look for one. He is self-aware, self-conscious, introspective and withdrawn. He is not even a Prince Hamlet he tells us, for at least Hamlet had energy.
He is in the equivalent social class of one of Dostoevsky’s government clerks. He is not unlike Golyadkin; he is respectable, in an average sort of way and stays out of everyone’s way. His world is constraining, emasculated and as close to nature and real life as a plastic clock-radio.
His world is also utterly devoid of decisiveness or action. There is always, “time yet for a hundred indecisions,” and “there will be time/To wonder, ‘Do I dare?’ and ‘Do I Dare?’” His relations with people are artificial, remote, and standardized for, “there will be time/To prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet;” There will be time for petty self-consciousness too, “They will say: ‘How his hair is growing thin!’” and “They will say: ‘But how his arms and legs are thin!”
His desire is to do something, to be something or even to become something. Just as the Underground Man would like to be an insect, just to be something real and definite, J. Alfred Prufrock would like, “to have been a pair of ragged claws/Scuttling across the floors of silent seas.”
What I would like to do now is turn around what I have demonstrated about the nature of the profound egocentric, as a literary creation and see what he can reveal about his creator.
As I have demonstrated throughout my paper, Dostoevsky created his profound egocentrics after his own image. If Dostoevsky was a profound egocentric, what does that suggest about him, as an artist and perhaps about the artistic process in general?
It is my belief that there are two basic methods for creating a literary character. Those two methods are the internal and the external. With the external approach the artist maintains his own sense of self-identity or I while he is creating his character. With the internal approach the creator loses his sense of self-identity and becomes the character while he is creating him. There are of course many shades in between – an artist may step out of his internal character to get a more objective look at him, and an artist might try stepping into an external character to get a feel for him. There is nothing terribly new about this idea of characters being divisible into internal and external ones, but it is an idea very relevant to the present discussion.
Dostoevsky, as his personality matured and he began to have closer relationships with people, probably developed a reasonably strong sense of other. An increase in the sense of other would not necessarily have an inverse effect on the sense of I. Providing his sense of I with an external frame of reference would allow for new growth. Dostoevsky’s process of self-exploration would continue and his understanding of his own inner world would increase.
The addition of a frame of reference to Dostoevsky’s supremely developed and explored inner world enabled him to go as deeply into human nature as anyone has ever gone. The question is, how did Dostoevsky apply his vast self-knowledge to his characters? The answer, I believe, is that Dostoevsky’s fantastically strong sense of I allowed him to assume the identity of his creations, and with total insight and penetration. The only limitation of this ability is that Dostoevsky’s intelligence and sense of I were so powerful that they had to be carried through during the transformation of identities. Hence, all the characters that Dostoevsky takes an internal approach to, and whose identity he assumes, must share his intelligence and exaggerated sense of I, and therefore his profound egocentrism.
One of Dostoevsky’s critics points out an incident in which Dostoevsky’s assumption of a character’s identity seems to have carried over to real life. Dostoevsky had appealed to the trustee of his father’s estate for unnecessary sums of money. This trustee was described as an “evangelically good man” and he did everything he could for Dostoevsky. When this man refused Dostoevsky his last request, for Dostoevsky’s own sake,
Dostoevsky became enraged and denounced his rich relation. His letter resounds with savage irony. He dramatizes his own situation, describing himself as sick, impoverished, and dying of hunger. At this time he was working on his first novel Poor People , and almost imperceptibly he transformed himself into his hero, the half-starved civil servant Makar Devushkin. In a good-natured fashion Karepin admonished and tried to reform him; Dostoevsky retorted with malicious sarcasm. The trustee’s reproaches, and they were fully deserved, wounded Dostoevsky’s self-pride. The novelist’s impression converted this honorable philanthropist into the figure of an exploiting bourgeois. Literature and reality were merged into one. The future author of Poor People had been aroused and inflamed by social pathos and Karepin became the victim of his accusations. (Mochulsky, p. 20)
Here is an excerpt from that letter:
You have tormented me, humiliated me; you have mocked me. I have borne it all with patience; I have contracted debts; I have used up all my money. I have endured shame and grief; I have endured sickness, hunger, and cold. (Mochulsky, p. 20-21)
I disagree with Mochulsky, however, in assuming that it was Makar Devushkin whose identity was assumed. I suspect that Dostoevsky assumed the identity of a suffering, martyred, underdog-identity enabling offensive, aggressive behaviors to appear totally defensive. A politician with a Quaker background, for example, whose superego would not tolerate aggressiveness, might need just such a mechanism in order to function in a position of power. (Younger readers might not recognize this as a diss of Richard Nixon who was a Quaker and who fluctuated between aggression and self pity. Nixon showed many symptoms of profound geocentricism, and one historian who read his personal journals described them as tormented and reading like Dostoevsky.   —Jonathan, 2006)
The range and depth of Dostoevsky’s writings, is equaled only by life itself. Any attempt to view Dostoevsky’s works through one concept or perspective, will lead to a very limited and distorted vision. The concept of profound egocentrism is not a final solution to all the complex motivations and behaviors of Dostoevsky’s characters, but rather one answer among many. With a proper realization of its values and limitation, profound egocentrism can prove a valuable perspective for a more complete understanding of Dostoevsky’s writings and literature in general.

(I am omitting the end notes to discourage potential plagiarists)

Have you ever felt that the world might be your dream, felt alienated, set apart from others, overwhelmed at times by your inner thought process?  If you have, then you may find Dostoevsky and the Profound Egocentric , written when I was just nineteen years old, to be very relevant to your inner experience.  My adult consciousness began with the writing of this paper, but it wasn’t until the following year, when I was twenty, that I connected the psychological state of profound egocentrism with an evolutionary model, and recognized its connection to the  dawning of a  new mode of consciousness and communication (see Archetypes of a New Evolution) .

In The Path of the Numinous
http://www.zaporacle.com/textpattern/article/10/the-path-of-the-numinous-living-and-working-with-the-creative-muse- I describe the origins of this paper as follows:
When I was about fourteen years old I woke up in the middle of the night and some inner prompting told me to turn on the radio. I had a futuristic looking clock radio by my bed that was always tuned to WBAI, a listener supported counter culture radio station. WBAI was one of my main lines into the Sixties, and I have never encountered a radio station remotely like it before or since. It was run by hippies, and nothing was too weird to be broadcast, and it was a fountain of creativity and novelty twenty four hours a day in the Sixties and Seventies in New York City. I clicked on the radio, and heard a voice coming out of it that sounded like my own mind speaking, but coming out of this external device. I had never had such an experience, had always assumed that the inner voice of my mind was unique to me and not to be encountered on the outside. The essential perspective of this voice was me, but here it was coming out of a radio speaker. I felt like I was experiencing an auditory hallucination, there was a rupture of plane as outside and inside interpenetrated and the firewall I thought existed between inner and outer burned down. I listened fascinated and entranced. Eventually there was a station identification break and I learned what was happening. WBAI was doing an all night reading of Fydor Dostoevsky’s novella, Notes from Underground .

At the time I didn’t know what to make of this experience, but made a mental note that one day I would have to find out who this Dostoevsky was and how it could be that a Russian writer could so perfectly express the inner perspective of my mind way back in the Nineteenth Century.

I wanted to read Dostoevsky, I was following the Path of the Numinous, and I wanted to find out more about the voice that was coming out of the radio, but I didn’t fully realize that yet. My original proposal was that I would write about Dostoevsky’s St. Petersburg, a city that attracted both his fascination and loathing. Because it was one of the first cities to be completely preplanned, Dostoesky saw it as an artificial world, a landscape of the soulless ego. This was a perfectly intriguing subject, but it was not where the muse wanted me to go.

Fairly soon into the project I came to realize that what was really numinous, what I really had to investigate was why that voice from the radio sounded like the inside of my own mind. As I read Dostoevsky I found that I felt something in common with a number of his central characters, not just the man from underground, but also Raskolnikov in Crime and Punishment and a few others. I had only taken one psychology course, the introductory survey course that everybody takes, but I was starting to discover that my mind was psychologically oriented and that I seemed to have psychological intuitions and thinking without having been trained in it. My mother was a psychologist for forty-four years, so I did grow up hearing and overhearing some psychology, but much of my insights seemed to come from the inside. Reading Dostoevsky novels I began to use certain of his characters to build a psychological model of a personality type I called “ the profound egocentric

While I was building this psychological model there was a decisive moment, perhaps the first of those twenty to forty minute zones when an entire vista of awareness opened up. It was at night and I was sitting on a park bench by myself on a path that led to the college library. Suddenly there was a vast coalescing of insights and intuitions, everything seemed to come together. I saw how this personality type worked in the Dostoevsky characters and how it worked in me, how it limited me, and how I was now in a situation with allies where I could begin to transcend those limitations. This was, for the first nineteen years of my life, an epiphany, a breakthrough into an unprecedented self knowledge. I felt the inner tectonic plates shift, and at that exact moment, on that park bench, I felt then, and feel now, that my adult consciousness began. To this day, when I look back at the landscape of memory that was the dividing line, the memories that come after that park bench are of a different sort as they are seen through the eyes of an analytical, self awareness that had not really come into its own before I sat down on that bench.

Dostoevsky and the Profound Egocentric

© Jonathan Zap 1977,2006

Spring, 1977 College Scholars Program, Ursinus College

Adviser:  Dr. Decatur

Profound egocentrism is a psychological concept that I believe is necessary for a complete understanding of Dostoevsky and many of his characters. It is also a concept that can be useful in a psychological approach to literature in general.
A Comprehensive Dictionary of Psychological and Psychoanalytical Terms defines “ egocentrism” as “ concerned with oneself, preoccupied with one’s own concerns and relatively insensitive to the concerns of others, though not necessarily selfish . Profound is used here in two senses. The first sense implies great depth and scope —- dealing with many levels and deeply within those levels. “ A profound effect on the situation .” The second sense implies great intellectual depth and complexity e.g. “ a profound philosophy .” The profound egocentric is a personality of great depth and intellectual complexity and is egocentric in many, many levels of his personality and very deeply within those levels. Profound egocentrism is an exclusive class within egocentrism.

Everyone (some autistic children may be exceptions) has to a greater or lesser extent, a sense of “ I .” A sense of “ I ” can be defined as a sense of one’s own being and thought process. Everyone also has, to varying degrees, a sense of other . A sense of other can be defined as an intuitive realization of the independent existence of other human beings, and of an independent, ongoing mental process in others.

The profound egocentric has a very exaggerated sense of I. Closely related to this exaggerated sense of I are extreme sensitivity, self-awareness, self-consciousness (in the commonplace sense of feeling awkward), and inner-directed thinking and personality. Qualities more indirectly related to the exaggerated sense of I are high intelligence and a constant flow of creative thought (thought not just a response to thee environment – abstract thought for example).
The profound egocentric’s sense of other and outside reality is generally weak. This sense of other has an inverse relationship with environmental stress. In other words as situations become more trying, the sense of other and outside reality can disintegrate completely.

Closely related to this weak sense of other and outside reality is an inability to relate to people in a natural way, and an unwillingness to associate with people. A disintegrated sense of other and outside reality also results in an inability to distinguish between hallucination, dream, imagination and reality, and a failure to recognize other human beings as independent entities.

Dostoevsky very concisely summarizes the net effect on the personality of an exaggerated sense of I and of a weak sense of other:
But though Ratkin was very sensitive about everything that concerned himself, he was very obtuse as regards the feelings and sensations of others – partly from his youth and inexperience, partly from his intense egoism.
In order to make this concept more concrete and more applicable to individual characters, I am going to approach the profound egocentric as a psychological model. A psychological model is a very useful device, but it has some drawbacks. The greatest drawback in transforming a psychological concept into a psychological model is that it can seem to imply greater universality than is actually the case.

Although all profound egocentrics have a unified concept in common, they do not necessarily have every functional characteristic of the psychological model in common. The greatest differences are in superficial behavioral symptoms that may be peculiar to particular characters. The more directly derived characteristics, however, differ only in degree. The difference in degree can be roughly explained by the consideration of five variables, or by dividing the profound egocentric into five stages of development. These explanations of differences in degree will be presented after the psychological model when they will be most meaningful.

The intensity of the profound egocentric’s inner world and his weak sense of other make him feel removed from the rest of humanity. Profound egocentrics, as a general trait, are loners and keep to themselves. The central character of Crime and Punishment , Raskolnikov, is a good example:

It should be noted that Raskolnikov had scarcely any friends at the university. He held himself aloof, never went to see anyone and did not welcome visitors.

In 1841, one of Dostoevsky’s instructors gave the following description of him:
His favorite place to work was the embrasure in the company’s corner dormitory… In this spot isolated from the other desks, F. M. Dostoevsky used to sit and occupy himself. It frequently happened that he would not notice anything that was going on around him.

One of Dostoevsky’s classmates recalled that, “He always held himself aloof, and he struck me as being almost constantly apart from the others…” (Mochulsky, p. 15) Dolgoruky the narrator of The Adolescent tells us that, “There’s really nothing so marvelous about people to bother so much about them.” Recalling his school days Dolgoruky shows a more serious sense of isolation:

Even at school, I had to overcome the disgust and force myself to chat familiarly with my classmates and I certainly never became really close with any of them. I built myself a shell and stayed in it. ( The Adolescent , p. 47)

The profound egocentric does not just tend avoid others, but actively withdraws from human contact:
He had resolutely withdrawn from all human contacts, like a tortoise retreating into its shell… (about Raskolnikov, Crime and Punishment , p. 23)

Dolgoruky repeats this sentiment almost word for word:

I’ll break off with them, leave everything, and withdraw into my shell. Yes my shell exactly that – I’ll hide inside it like a tortoise! ( The Adolescent , p. 14)

The profound egocentric’s intuitive belief, as compared to an intellectual understanding, in the existence of other people is normally weak and under stress may become nonexistent. With an abstract, but not an instinctive realization of the existence of other people, the profound egocentric feels a gigantic distance separating him from other human beings:

The most surprising thing of all, in general, was the unbridgeable chasm which lay between him and all the others. It was as if he and they belonged to different races. They regarded him, and he them with mistrust and hostility. (about Raskolnikov, Crime and Punishment , p. 23)

The profound egocentric can feel a separation from people in a very literal sense: “…everything round me seems as if it were happening somewhere else…Even you…it is as if I were looking at you from a thousand miles away…” (Raskolnikov, Crime and Punishment, p. 196) The profound egocentric feels different from other people and out of place: “Why, why am I here? Why do I feel an alien? Why am I on ‘another planet’?” 5

The profound egocentric’s sense of outside reality is capable, especially under stress, of disintegrating completely. The process of disintegration seems to begin with a weakening and eventual collapse of the intuitive sense of outside reality. At that point the profound egocentric’s concept of reality is purely abstract and intellectual. When Raskolnikov’s sense of outside reality breaks, for example, he looks around him and says , “This is all conditional, all relative, all merely forms.” The profound egocentric’s constant self-exploration and abstract reasoning eventually lead him to question all intellectual beliefs. Without the benefit of intuitive premises the profound egocentric finds himself incapable of proving to himself the existence of outside reality. In other words, he can get as far as “cogito ergo sum,” but no farther. Ivan Karamazov’s internal demon, in a dialogue with Ivan, crystallizes this philosophical dead end:

No, you are not some apart, you are myself, you are I and nothing more! You are rubbish, you are my fancy!

Well, if you like, I have the same philosophy as you, that would be true. Je pense, donc je suis , I know that for a fact, all the rest, all these worlds, God and even Satan – all that is not proved, to my mind. Does all that exist of itself, or is it only an emanation of myself, a logical development of my ego which alone has existed forever… ( Brothers Karamazov , p. 781)

Dolgoruky also has this egocentric view of reality and sees it as generating from his own being,

Here are all these people rushing around hurrying desperately when, in fact, who knows, perhaps it’s all only somebody’s dream and not a single person here is real, genuine, not a single action is really taking place. What will happen if the dreamer suddenly wakes up and everything just vanishes? ( The Adolescent , p. 136)

In the Dream of a Ridiculous Man, a short story Dostoevsky wrote near the end of his life, we see a total collapse of both outside reality and a sense of other:

It seemed clear to me that life and the world in some way or other depended on me now. It might almost be said that the world seemed to be created for me alone. If I were to shoot myself, the world would cease to exist – for me at any rate to say nothing of the possibility that nothing would in fact exist for anyone after me and the whole world would dissolve as soon as my consciousness became extinct, would disappear in a twinkling like a phantom, like some integral part of my consciousness, and vanish without leaving a trace behind, for all this world and all these people exist only in my consciousness.

(something goes horribly wrong with the formatting in this document after this and everything appears in italics,  hope you can get past this annoyance)

Later in my paper I will go into the profound egocentric’s fatal pride and distance from God as a result of his reasoning ability. In the above quotation we can see the ultimate act of pride and separation from God. The character thinks of the universe as existing inside his consciousness, and therefore of his being God.

(In this paper I seem to assume a monotheistic POV, perhaps because that was Dostoevsky’s point of view, and possibly because it was my own at the time as well.  I should have made a clearer distinction, and pointed out that the concepts of pride, reason as rebellion of God, etc. came directly from Dostoevsky and were not superimposed on the material by me.  —-Jonathan in 2006)

One group of Dostoevsky’s characters, his dreamers, have a very weak or nonexistent sense of the outside world and have, as a substitute, a world of their own creation. Dostoevsky’s concept of the dreamer was very complex and any attempt to define it here would be an oversimplification. A working distinction between dreamers and non-dreamers is that dreamers are people immersed in a world of romantic fantasies. There is a strong relationship between Dostoevsky’s dreamer and the profound egocentric. In Dostoevsky’s writings as a whole, a large number of the profound egocentrics are dreamers, and almost all of his dreamers are profound egocentrics. This relationship I believe to be entirely consistent with the concept of the profound egocentric. The profound egocentric’s intense inner world, and separation from the outside world, creates an ideal environment for dreams, and is a prerequisite for dreamers. In other words, the above characteristics of the profound egocentric lead to a great susceptibility to dreams, and these same characteristics, almost by definition, are basic to the dreamer’s personality. After all, how could a true dreamer not have an intense inner world and a separation from the outside world?

Most profound egocentrics, however, do not appear to be dreamers when we meet them – at least not in Dostoevsky’s romantic sense of the word. Dreaming is the profound egocentric’s second stage of development. When we encounter the profound egocentric, he may have already passed out of that stage of development, though at some point in time he was a dreamer. In one of those later stages, the profound egocentric may have come to regard dreaming as a weak indulgence, and may even be in the process of trying to become a “man of action” or a “moral superman”, philosophical concepts that preclude indulgence in day-dreaming and fantasy. Although the profound egocentric at that stage may not allow himself to indulge in fantasy of the romantic sort, he may be totally absorbed in a world of philosophical theories, intellectualizations and abstract reasoning that may be even further removed from reality (and far more dangerous) than the dream world.

The profound egocentric’s continuing susceptibility to dreams is observable in a variety of ways, but especially in his inability to separate his sleeping dreams and hallucinations from reality. Raskolnikov, for example, after having a nightmare, must ask himself, “Is this still the dream or not?” And “Can this be the dream continuing?” ( Crime and Punishment p. 236-7). Ivan Karamazov is another example of a non-dreamer who cannot separate dream from reality:
It was not a dream…I was asleep last time, but this dream was not a dream…I have dreams now, …yet they are not dreams but reality. I walk about, talk and see…though I am asleep. ( Brothers Karamazov , p. 792)
Still another profound egocentric with the same problem is Yakov Golyadkin, hero of The Double:
…not quite certain whether he was awake or still asleep, whether the things around him were real or the continuation of his chaotic dreams.
Later, Golyadkin must ask himself, “Am I dreaming or is this real?” ( The Double , p. 196). The list goes on; this inseparability of dream and reality appears to be universal to the profound egocentric.
Many profound egocentrics that are non-dreamers are eventually revealed as having once been dreamers. Dolgoruky in The Adolescent is a good example:
During the days of my dreamy Moscow loneliness the seed of the idea appeared in my mind while I was still in the second year of high school and has never left me since. Everything else in my life became subordinated to it. Even before it got hold of me, indeed from my earliest childhood, I’d always lived in a dream world, colored by a certain light, but, after this great all-absorbing idea came to me, my daydreams acquired a certain unity, took on a well-defined shape, and instead of being crazy became rational. ( The Adolescent , p. 13)
To Dostoevsky, however, the distinction between “crazy” and “rational” was purely academic, as I will demonstrate later in my section on reason. Later in The Adolescent, Dolgoruky gives us an explanation of how, exactly, the dreamer becomes a rationalist-monomaniac. We begin to understand that the profound egocentric’s next stage of development is a focusing of many dreams into one dream based on logical premises and rationally derived. Dolgoruky describes the transformation:
I was the happiest when I went to bed at night and could pull the blanket over my head, thus isolating myself from the people around me and from the sounds they made, I became free to re-create my life in a different pattern. Wherever I went, my most extravagant, wild, daydreams went with me, until I discovered my “idea”. Then all my crazy silly longings were transformed into rational aspirations and my wishful thinking, which had been spinning a dreamy romance inside my head, was turned into reasoned thought applicable to real life. Everything merged into one single goal. ( The Adolescent , p. 86)
Dostoevsky himself went through a transformation similar to Dolgoruky’s. Dostoevsky, however, acquired a sense of outside reality while Dolgoruky did not. During the first part of his life, up to his early twenties, Dostoevsky was a dreamer. Then, sometime in the years 1843-1845, Dostoevsky ceased being a dreamer and became infinitely more aware of external reality. One of Dostoevsky’s best biographers describes the turning point:
Up until this moment Dostoevsky had lived in a world of romantic dreams. Far-off lands and distant times, the exotic and heroic had completely captivated him. He was blind to reality, and everything that was mysterious, fantastic, and out-of-the ordinary would lure him into its captivating sphere: the knight’s castles in the novels of Radcliffe and Walter Scott, the tales of Hoffmann, the diabolism in Souilie…Then suddenly his eyes were opened and he understood: there is nothing more fantastic than reality . (Mochulsky, p. 27)
In 1861, Dostoevsky himself described the experience and said, among other things, that “in those precise minutes, my real existence began…” (Mochulsky, p. 27)
Dostoevsky, in a very autobiographical piece for the Petersburg Chronicle, describes the dreamer. Many of the characteristics of his dreamer coincide exactly with the characteristics of the profound egocentric. For example:
They settle themselves for the most part in a deep solitude in inaccessible corners, as though trying to hide themselves from people and from light…Frequently reality produces an onerous impression, one hostile to the dreamer’s heart, and he hastens to withdraw into his own inviolable golden nook…Imperceptibly the talent for real life begins to deaden within him… (Mochulsky, p. 71-72)
We soon become aware that the author is talking about himself, “…His imagination has been set in motion: straightaway an entire story, a tale, a novel is born…” (Mochulsky, p. 72) Fourteen years later the subject comes up again in a collection entitled Petersburg Dreams. Here Dostoevsky abandons the pretense of third person narrative, and tells us about his own life as a dreamer:
And what dreams did I not have in my adolescence…I was so lost in dreams that my whole youth passed by without my ever noticing it… (Mochulsky, p. 72)
In White Nights we find another profound egocentric-dreamer in whose character Dostoevsky makes some autobiographical revelations, “‘I can dream up whole novels, you know…’ He dreams of everything…of being a poet, at first unrecognized later crowned.” Through the same character, a government clerk, we get a long discourse on the agonies of creating art. The character is obviously autobiographical, and we are given a very autobiographical description of the dreamer. Most importantly, the characteristics described by the narrator as being universal to the dreamer are equally universal to the profound egocentric. For example, the recurrent metaphor of the tortoise retreating into its shell is used to describe the dreamer:
A dreamer is, if you want me to define him, not a real human being but a sort of intermediary creature. He usually installs himself in some remote corner, shrinking even from the daylight. And once he’s installed in that corner of his, he grows into it like a snail or at least like that curious thing which is both an animal and a house – the tortoise. ( White Nights , p. 21)
The narrator also gives us a lengthy description of the dreamer’s inability to relate to people. He follows this description of someone with a weak sense of other with a comment on the dreamer’s grip on reality in general:
If fact, sometimes he almost believes that the dream life is no figment of the imagination, no self-deception, no delusion, but something real, actual, existing. ( White Nights , p. 27)
The narrator then applies this to himself and describes the agonies of a life lived inside the mind, and the agony of what Dostoevsky variously describes as “acute consciousness” or “lucidity.”
…for there are moments when I’m overcome by such anguish and despair that…In those moments, I feel that I’ll never have a true life because I feel sure I’ve entirely lost touch with reality; because I feel damned; because in the middle of my fancy-filled nights, I have moments of lucidity that are unbearable! ( White Nights , p. 30)
Dreams are used as substitutes for external reality. Many profound egocentrics’ disintegrated sense of external reality creates a greater dependence and reliance on internal reality, while depriving the profound egocentric of an external frame of reference. This frame of reference cannot exist once the sense of other has disintegrated. Without a sense of other, the profound egocentric is unable to relate to, or understand, other personalities and hence has no frame of reference in which to compare and objectify his own emotions and ideas.
The internal world which the profound egocentric inhabits may be very self-contained and rational in its own sphere. Obviously, however, the internal world becomes totally isolated once the external world has collapsed. Because of this isolation, the internal world must now suffer the same logical analysis that destroyed the outside world.
The profound egocentric logically dissects the outside world until he finally comes to the dead end question – “Is reality real?” Unable to answer that question the profound egocentric retreats into his inner world. The process of logical analysis continues until he reaches another dead end, “How do I know if the internal world is real?”  i.e. “How do I know if I’m insane?” Raskolnikov is a good example of the profound egocentric at that stage:
A dark and tormenting idea was beginning to rear its head, the idea that he was going out of his mind and that he was not capable of reasoning or protecting himself. ( Crime and Punishment , p. 69. For a variation see p. 76)
Ivan Karamazov sums up the problem, “And can one observe that one’s going mad oneself?”
Once the question of sanity has been raised the entire thought process is under doubt, and even “cogito ergo sum” becomes unsatisfying. When that point is reached, the profound egocentric reaches the ultimate dead end – “How do I know I exist?” Not all profound egocentrics will have reached that stage at the point in time in which we encounter them. The fear of existence as illusion is in fact the profound egocentric’s last internal stage of development. Once existence itself has been questioned, the personality must either break down, or go through spiritual rebirth.
The fear of existence as illusion is a recurrent force in Dostoevsky’s writings. Dostoevsky is especially afraid of the nonbeing that determination suggests: that man does not have free will, and that his whole being is reducible to physics, mechanics and the secondary science of biology.
Imagine: inside, in the nerves, in the head _ that is, these nerves are there in the brain…(damn them!) there are sort of little tails, the little tails of those nerves and as soon as they begin quivering…then an image appears…That’s why I see and think, because of those tails, not at all because I’ve got a soul… ( Brothers Karamazov , p. 716)
This fear reaches its highest level of development in Notes From Underground. A large part of the book is spent in an attempt to refute the determinist’s denial of free will and the right to choose anything, no matter how irrational. (See Notes From Underground, chapter 7) The prime motivator of many of Dostoevsky’s characters is a desire to prove to themselves that they are free-willed entities. With this motivation in mind, many of the most inexplicably irrational actions of Dostoevsky’s characters can be explained. The explanation is simple; these irrational actions are done to prove man capable of irrational, non-advantageous behavior and therefore a possessor of free will.
A weakened sense of other, a weak frame of reference, and a growing fear of insanity are the primary motivations for the secondary behavioral symptom which I term “compulsive explanation.” Many profound egocentrics show a compulsive desire to explain, or at least to relate their most bizarre behaviors to others. These profound egocentrics seem to be practicing a kind of phobia-therapy on themselves. In a desperate effort to reduce their fear of the strangeness of their own actions, their separation from others, and the possibility of their own insanity, they constantly repeat the details of their strangest behaviors with the hope of becoming desensitized to them.
In the second chapter of Crime and Punishment Dostoevsky seems to be consciously working with this idea. Raskolnikov, at that point in the book, has just made up his mind to go through with his planned murder. Once he has made that decision, his usual, secretive self suddenly desires companionship. Raskolnikov has become afraid of himself:
Raskolnikov was not used to crowds and, as we have said, had lately avoided all social contacts, but now he suddenly felt drawn to people. Something as it were new had been accomplished in his soul, and with it had come a thirst for society. ( Crime and Punishment , p.
To satisfy this need Raskolnikov goes to a public house. There he meets another creature like himself, Marmeladov, who has already committed a fatal sin. Raskolnikov’s misdeed was only in the planning stage, and so it is Marmeladov that has the greater need to talk. Marmeladov is instinctively drawn to Raskolnikov as a kindred spirit:
It sometimes happens that we find ourselves interested from the first glance in complete strangers, even before we have spoken to them…The avidity with which he seized upon Raskolnikov was such that it seemed as though he too had spoken to nobody for a month…’Young man, I read a certain affliction in your features.’ ( Crime and Punishment , p. 8-13)
Marmeladov proceeds to describe his most immoral and irrational behaviors in a despairing effort to get them off his chest. Marmeladov even encourages his audience to call him a swine, so that he can at least be positively identified with something and put in a category.
After Raskolnikov has gone through with the murder, the compulsive explanation behavior increases dramatically. He goes to public houses and, “felt somehow drawn to talk to everybody.” The behavior intensifies enough that the once secretive Raskolnikov feels compelled to explain the motivations for murder to the investigator, and even hint at his own guilt.
Another clear example of this compulsive explanation behavior is in the first-person narrative of Notes From Underground and The Adolescent. Both narrators pick up their pens in a desperate effort to explain themselves. Both narrators tell us that they will never have their autobiographical accounts published, and yet they are constantly responding to an imaginary audience.
In Notes From Underground one is always conscious of the narrator’s feverish desire to explain himself:
But have I explained anything? How is one to explain this…But I shall explain myself. I shall pursue the matter to the better end! That is why I’ve taken up my pen… ( Notes From Underground , p. 268)
The narrator finally comes to terms with himself and tells us his real motivations in writing. We are told that the written word is,”…more conducive to self-examination” and that he wants to “make a test and see whether it is possible to be completely frank and unafraid of the truth.” (Notes From Underground, p. 122)
The desire to explain himself is also Dolgoruky’s primary motivation in writing his autobiography – The Adolescent. The book opens with these words:
I couldn’t resist: I sat down and started writing the story of my first steps in life, although I could have managed very well without doing so. ( The Adolescent , p. 1)
Ivan Karamazov says it in one sentence; “ I am trying to explain as quickly as possible my essential nature…”
As the profound egocentric’s sense of other weakens, his ability to relate to people in a natural way also weakens. Eventually the profound egocentric relates to people in a purely mechanical way. He no longer reacts spontaneously, but rather operates himself from within. The profound egocentric’s true personality seems trapped inside a hollowed-out puppet. At this stage, the profound egocentric is aware that he is play-acting his way through life, and is only concerned with finding the right role and playing it convincingly. One of the best examples of this is Raskolnikov as he withdraws from human society. Raskolnikov’s outward behavior becomes more and more mechanical and artificial. The narrator describes Raskolnikov as speaking, “…rarely and reluctantly, as if under compulsion or to fulfill an obligation…” (Crime and Punishment, p. 188) Raskolnikov’s sister observes that, “He is asking forgiveness and making friends again, as though it was part of his job, or as though he had got a lesson by heart.” (p. 191) Raskolnikov’s mother also notices, and is described as being “…even more worried than before by his sudden new business-like way of speaking.” (p. 199) Raskolnikov himself, worries after speaking, “Have I done well? Did it seem natural? Wasn’t it too exaggerated? Why did I see ‘women’ like that?” (p. 213)
As described earlier, half of the sense of other is an intuitive realization of an ongoing mental process in others. Many profound egocentrics may be somewhat aware of the existence of other people, but not aware that other people are changeable and freethinking. In this stage the profound egocentric views other people as static, and himself as the only variable in any social situation, and the only entity capable of change. The profound egocentric sees his relationships with other people as a game of chess. Other people are chess pieces that can only react in certain patterns as prescribed by the rules of the game. A bishop can only move as a bishop and a knight only as a knight. In the same way, a mother must react only as a mother and a sister only as a sister. So long as everyone plays their prescribed roles they can all be pleasantly manipulated. The game, however, becomes very difficult when the pieces themselves refuse to obey the rules: “In general, although in my imagination I’ve always managed to handle people pretty well, in real life I have proved rather inept at it.” ( The Adolescent , p. 19)
The profound egocentric’s basic instability creates a need for total stability in others. The profound egocentric tends to create static, stable roles for people, and can genuinely like those people, so long as they are not actually present. Dolgoruky loves and idolizes his father until he actually meets him. Dolgoruky comes to hate his father, not for being what he is, but for not being what he was supposed to be. In the same way, Raskolnikov loves his mother and sister until they are in front of him, changing and reacting independently: “The thought occurred to him that it was only when they were absent that he really loved them.” ( Crime and Punishment , p. 192)
With a weak sense of other, the contents of other people’s minds become great mysteries. Combined with a very basic failure to realize that humanity consists of independent individuals, the profound egocentric is subject to certain kinds of paranoia. The perspective is always “me and them.” The profound egocentric begins automatically thinking in terms of a community mind. Throughout Dostoevsky’s literature we find, “they’re all—at/to/of me.” Raskolnikov wonders:
…oh Lord, tell me just one thing; do they know everything or not? What if they know it all already and were only pretending, mocking me while I lay here and what if they come in now and say that they have known everything for a long time… ( Crime and Punishment , p. 107)
Golyadkin is one of the more obviously paranoid characters. He is always lamenting that, “They’re all plotting against me.” ( The Double , p. 178)
The same paranoia surfaces in extreme self-consciousness. Although the profound egocentric doesn’t particularly worry about what other people look like, he is sure, in his infinite egocentrism, that everyone is minutely examining and ridiculing his appearance. Golyadkin is described as having, “…the impression that all the people inside the house were watching him from the windows, and he felt that he would die then and there if he just turned around.” ( The Double , p. 177)
Many profound egocentrics act, even when absolutely alone, as though they were under a spotlight in front a darkened theatre of hostile faces. The narrator of Notes From Underground feels he is being mocked even as he writes his autobiography in his hole in the ground:
But doesn’t it seem to you gentlemen, that I might be apologizing to you for something? Asking you to forgive me for something? Yes, I’m sure it does… Well, I assure you I don’t care a damn whether it does seem so to you or not… ( Notes From Underground , p. 264-5)
Dolgoruky writing his autobiography feels the same way;
The thought has suddenly struck me that if anyone ever read what I’ve written here, he would burst out laughing at this ridiculous adolescent…
Golyadkin, the hero of The Double, is both paranoid and self-conscious. He has, throughout the novel, the effortless grace and poise of a housewife in curlers and bathrobe, accidentally walking onto a national news show in progress. In the example below, Golyadkin is meeting his doctor for an ordinary appointment:
…having failed to prepare the opening words, which were like stepping stones for him in such cases, he became completely confused; he muttered something that might perhaps have been an apology and, not knowing what to do next, took a chair and sat down.
But realizing immediately that he had sat down without having been invited to do so, he stood up again, hoping thus to retrieve his faux pas. Then vaguely realizing that he had made two faux pas one after the other, he immediately decided to commit third and, smiling brightly, muttered some explanation, then turned beet red, lost the thread of what he was saying, became expressively silent, sat down, and this time didn’t get up again. ( The Double , p. 155)
Another hypersensitive character, Kolya from Brothers Karamazov, is terribly worried about his physical appearance. His physical description, as we objectively learn it from the narrator, is identical to descriptions of Dostoevsky in his youth. (See Brothers Karamazov, p. 646, 652) We do not need to make, however, any parallels to decide whether Dostoevsky himself was self-conscious and paranoid. Biographical data clearly shows us that he was. For example, one biographer relates the following incident:
Turgenev told I. Pavlosky that on one occasion Dostoevsky came into his apartment at the precise moment when all the guests (Belinsky, Ogaryov, Herzen) were laughing at a certain piece of nonsense. He interpreted this as being on his account. He bolted out of the door and for an hour walked about the streets in the freezing cold. Later when Turgenev chanced to find him, he exclaimed: “My God! It’s just impossible! Where ever I go, everywhere they are laughing at me.” (Mochulsky, p. 61)
The highly intelligent, turbulent, and inner-directed mind of the profound egocentric is especially prone to, and often distressed by, excessive mental static. I’m defining mental static as thoughts, memories of sensations and images not willfully conjured by the individual. Dostoevsky describes the phenomenon very effectively:
He could not think. His mind held ideas, or fragments of ideas, disconnected and incoherent images – the faces of the people he had known as a child or seen once and remembered again, the belfry of the Church of the Ascension, the billiard table in some public house, with an officer playing at it, the smell of cigars in a basement tobacco shop, a tavern, a black stair case, sloppy with dishwater and strewn with eggshells, the Sunday sound of bells borne in from somewhere… all changing and whirling in dizzy spirals. Sometimes an image pleased him and he tried to cling to it, but it would fade away. ( Crime and Punishment , p. 231)
This mental static is not blocked out by even the most traumatic events, and Dostoevsky seems obsessed with the idea of mental static pervading the mind of the prisoner being led to the scaffold; very likely a result of his own experience. (In 1849 Dostoevsky was sentenced to death. The sentence was altered to four years in penal servitude, but not until Dostoevsky and twenty others went through every formality of an execution.) In Brothers Karamazov and Crime and Punishment this idea occurs repeatedly. For example:
At the most terrible moments of a man’s life, for instance when he is being led to execution, he remembers just such trifles. He will forget anything but some green roof that has flashed past him on the road, or a jackdaw on a cross – that he will remember. ( Brothers Karamazov , p. 876)
In The Idiot there is a full two-page description of a man approaching the scaffold and all the irrelevant thoughts going through his head. Clearly, this must have been at least indirectly generated from Dostoevsky’s own mock execution. For the purpose of this paper, these examples demonstrate that Dostoevsky himself was prone to excessive mental static. His obsession with the subject, however, probably had more to do with the religious question which being bound by earthly thoughts before death suggests.
Dostoevsky’s understanding of thought static and the true, disjointed nature of consciousness in general, was sophisticated enough that he developed something very closely approximating stream of consciousness long before Joyce, Proust or Woolf. There are at least two examples of this in The Double:
That gentleman is wearing a wig, Golyadkin decided, and so if that wig were pulled off, he’d have a head just as bare as the palm of my hand.
Having made that important discovery, Golyadkin remembered the Arab emirs who, under the green turbans they wear to show their family ties with the prophet Mohammed, have equally bare, hairless heads that would be exposed if their turbans were removed. Then, probably through a peculiar association of ideas, Golyadkin passed from the Arabs to the Turks and from the Turks to Turkish slippers, which made him think that Andrei Filipovich’s shoes looked more like slippers than shoes. ( The Double , p. 180. For another example see p. 286)
One of Dostoevsky’s critics points out an even better example in The Meek One:
Now as long as she’s here, everything is still all right: I come near and look at her every minute; but, tomorrow she will be carried away – and how shall I remain alone then? Now she is on the table in the hall – I put two card tables together – while the coffin will be here tomorrow, a white one, white gros-de-Napables, but then, this is not the point…I keep walking and want to explain it to myself. It’s six hours already that I’ve sought to explain it and I’m still not able to gather my thoughts into focus. The thing is that I keep walking, walking, walking…This now is how it was, I will simply relate it in order (order!). (Mochulsky, p. 548)
At the risk of making a generalization, all profound egocentrics are highly intelligent. Some of Dostoevsky’s profoundly egocentric characters, such as the narrator of Notes From Underground, are among the most intelligent in all literature. In Notes From Underground Dostoevsky expresses the idea that high intelligence in a moral vacuum will evolve into profound egocentricity or as Dostoevsky expresses it, “the man of heightened consciousness.” Every quality Dostoevsky ascribes to the “man of heightened consciousness” coincides exactly with the profound egocentric. This point will be demonstrated later in the paper when I do an individual study of the profound egocentric in Notes From Underground.
Are all profound egocentrics highly intelligent? To use circular reasoning they are by definition people of great intellectual depth. To answer the question in a more meaningful manner, we must decide if there are characters that show signs of being profound egocentrics and yet are not highly intelligent. Two possibilities that might occur to the reader of Dostoevsky are Golyadkin, the hero of The Double, and Dimitri Karamazov. In the first case, the character does not appear especially intelligent, and in the second, he is clearly described as not intelligent.
The confusion in the first case is the result of the personality disintegration of Golyadkin; Golyadkin One is just a projection of Golyadkin’s surface image of himself. All that is humble, respectable and average is projected into Golyadkin One. All that is ruthless, shrewd and manipulative is projected in the “Double” – Golyadkin Two. The intelligence of Golyadkin Two, however, is still not a true reflection of a reintegrated Golyadkin. The intelligence of the true Golyadkin is even more than the sum of the two parts, because they are only surface projections. Somewhere there must be a third entity that maintains the existence of Golyadkin One and Two. We may not find high intelligence in the individual fragments of a disintegrated personality, but when we analyze the psychological phenomenon of Golyadkin as a whole, we must conclude that such a disintegration could only have happened to the most intelligent and complex of personalities.
Dimitri Karamazov, on the other hand, clearly is not very intelligent, and yet he displays several of the symptoms of the profound egocentric. Dimitri’s symptoms, however, are the result of infantile egocentrism under stress, and not a profound egocentrism. Dimitri is so wrapped up in his own gratification that he assumes that providing for him is everyone’s goal in life. Mitya (Dimitri) instinctively expects everyone to respond to his emotional temperament. When he suddenly decides to see a certain peasant in the middle of the night, he is actually outraged to find him sleeping and not waiting for him, Mitya, in breathless anticipation:
What was insufferably humiliating was that, after leaving things of importance and making such sacrifices, he, Mitya, utterly worn out, should with business of such urgency be standing over this dolt on whom his whole fate depended, while he snored as though there was nothing the matter, as though he’d dropped from another planet. ( Brothers Karamazov , p. 457)
Infantile egocentrism, probably extended from childhood, would be the most likely stage of Dimitri’s development, not profound egocentrism. Dimitri Karamazov has the necessary, morally decadent environment, but he does not have enough intellectual depth to develop into a true profound egocentric.
Self-examination and self-awareness of a very flawed personality, and of a very impure soul, leads the profound egocentric to a great deal of self-hatred, self-destructiveness and inverted bitterness. This too, seems to be a universal characteristic of the profound egocentric.
Much of the self-depreciation is really a verbal form of self-flagellation, in the full medieval sense of the word. The repetitiousness of the language in these self-depreciations, and their non-communication of any new information, seems to suggest that they are the verbal equivalent of multiple whip-snaps: “I am a wretch, wretch, wretch, wretch!” (Brothers Karamazov, p. 712) Raskolnikov, Golyadkin and the narrator of Notes From Underground seem the most fond of verbal masochism. As Raskolnikov says, “The fact is I said that mostly to torment myself…”
Inverted bitterness and internal masochism are also universal to the profound egocentric. The profound egocentric seems unable to resist dredging up old memories of embarrassments and humiliations and of going over a current list of weaknesses. Raskolnikov constantly reproaches himself: “the bitterness was directed against himself; he remembered his own ‘cowardice’ with scorn and shame.” (Crime and Punishment, p. 303) The narrator of Notes From Underground has frequent bitter tirades against himself, often referring to himself in the third person as a mouse:
Of course, the only thing left for it to do is to shrug its puny shoulders and, affecting a scornful smile, scurry ignominiously to its mouse-hole. And there in its repulsive evil smelling nest, the downtrodden, ridiculed mouse plunges immediately into a cold, poisonous and most important – never-ending hatred. For forty year (The narrator (we are already told) is forty years old.) , it will remember the humiliation in all its ignominious details, each time adding some new point, more abject still, endlessly taunting and tormenting itself. Although ashamed of its own thoughts the mouse will remember everything, go over it again and again, then think up possible new humiliations. ( Notes From Underground , p. 97)
The superior intelligence, intellectual development, and awareness of the profound egocentric lead him to perhaps his most basic flaw – pride. The profound egocentric’s intense pride can coexist with the worst self-depreciations and humiliations. Pride, in fact, is so inherent to the profound egocentric that it can only be constrained by the total breakdown of his personality.
In Crime and Punishment, pride is directly linked, more than any other force, to Raskolnikov’s fall. Dostoevsky in his notebooks for Crime and Punishment writes, “In his image in the novel is expressed the idea of extraordinary pride, arrogance and contempt for all society…” Right from the start we are made aware of Raskolnikov’s fatal pride:
He was…superciliously proud and reserved. It seemed to some of his fellow students that he looked down on them all as children, as if he had outdistanced them in knowledge, development and ideas, and that he considered their interests and convictions beneath him. ( Crime and Punishment , p. 44)
Pride is what leads Raskolnikov’s intellectualizing mind to the concept of the moral superman, and then to murder itself. Pride is also what prevents Raskolnikov’s spiritual regeneration. Suicide is the ultimate act of pride for many, and Raskolnikov is driven to suicide out of pride. Raskolnikov, however, is saved from doing himself in by an even greater form of pride.
And it was to escape the shame that I wanted to drown myself, Dunya, but the thought came to me, when I was already standing on the bank, that if I had hitherto considered myself strong then the shame should not frighten me now… Is that pride, Dunya?
Yes, Rodya, it is pride. ( Crime and Punishment , p. 438)
Pride is described as causing his fall, and pride is described as preventing his repentance and regeneration:
I wonder if my spirit will really grow so humble …that I shall whine and whimper before people, branding myself a criminal with every word I utter. Yes, exactly, exactly! That is why they are deporting me now, that is what they want…Look at all these scurrying about the streets, and every one of them is a scoundrel and a criminal by his very nature, and worse still an idiot! But try to save me from exile and they all go mad with righteous indignation! Oh, how I hate them all! ( Crime and Punishment , p. 440)
Pride was something Raskolnikov’s character was built around and that he could not function without. When he is sent to Siberia we are told, “…he was not ashamed of his shaven head or his fetters; his pride was deeply wounded, and it was the wound to his pride that made him fall ill.” (Crime and Punishment, p. 458)
Pride is a quality that seems universal to Dostoevsky’s profound egocentrics. Pride is something that comes so naturally to the profound egocentric that it seems virtually inevitable. Even during the worst self-depreciations the profound egocentric cannot divest himself of pride:
I’m going to pieces anyhow. I’m becoming nothing but an old doormat, but that doesn’t prevent me from going around holding forth about my self-respect and talking about saving my honor! ( The Double , p. 239)
Pride can so overwhelm the profound egocentric that he may be able to recognize pride in others but be unaware of it in himself:
I ended up with the impression that it was not high society that had turned its back on this proud man but rather he who had banned these people from his presence, so great was his air of independence. What actually worried me was whether he really had the right to look down upon the world with that proud air! I had to find out the truth and find it out very quickly, for I had come here to judge that man! I was still keeping my secret power from him, as I had to decide first whether to accept or reject him. ( The Adolescent , p. 17)
The profound egocentric may not even be able to escape through religious submission:
They choose God so as not to submit to their fellow men without of course acknowledging the underlying reason, namely, that it’s less humiliating to submit to God. Some of these people become ardently religious, or rather thirst ardently for religion. But then they mistake their desire for faith itself, so some of them are bound to be disappointed in the end. ( The Adolescent , p. 59)
Understanding pride, realizing its destructiveness and recognizing it in himself will still not cure the profound egocentric of all its effects. Dostoevsky was the ideal example. He knew everything there was to know about pride, was aware of it in himself, and yet could no nothing about it. Dostoevsky wrote in a letter to his brother that, “There is a terrible defect in my personality, a boundless self-love and vanity .” (Mochulsky, p. 53) Pride is so very basic to the profound egocentric’s personality structure and mental perspective, that he cannot by his own powers rid himself of it. Unable to escape pride, the profound egocentric, for that reason alone, is in great spiritual danger. The profound egocentric must humble himself before God to be saved, but it is only through the grace of God and spiritual rebirth that the profound egocentric’s personality can be restructured and that he can be capable of genuine humility.
Because of the overwhelming flow of contradictory thought and ideas in the mind of the profound egocentric, and the excessive use of reasoning (the kind that can find only as many reasons for doing something as against it), the profound egocentric feels or suspects that he is incapable of decisive action. Raskolnikov tells us, “…I am talking too much. That’s why I don’t act, because I am always talking. Or perhaps I talk so much because I can’t act.” (Crime and Punishment, p. 2) Dolgoruky talks about “this sickening wishy-washiness of mine” and tells us that “in general, all my life I’ve been slow to take action.” (The Adolescent, p.26, 118) The narrator of Notes From Underground explains his inability to act in terms of the profound egocentric in general:
…the direct, the inevitable and the legitimate result of consciousness is to make all actions impossible, or – to put it differently – consciousness leads to thumb-twiddling…all plain men and men of action are active only because they are dull-witted and mentally undeveloped…owing to their arrested mental development they mistake the nearest and secondary causes for primary causes and in this way persuade themselves much more easily and quickly than other people that they have found a firm basis for whatever business they have had in hand and, as a result, they are no longer worried…Where am I to get the basis from? Where am I to find the primary cause to lean against? I am constantly exercising my powers of thought and consequently, every primary cause within me at once draws another to itself, one still more primary, and so on ad infinitum. That, in fact, is the basis of every sort of consciousness and analysis. ( Notes From Underground , p. 276)
In other words, the profound egocentric’s thought process, by its nature, is incapable of being decisive.
The fear of indecisiveness is very dangerous because it leaves the profound egocentric highly susceptible to ideas or systems of thought that allow for action and decisiveness. Raskolnikov’s desire to prove himself a moral superman is driven on by a gnawing fear that he is incapable of decisiveness, let alone Napoleonic decisiveness. Many profound egocentrics want to be “men of action” and are so anxious to get out of the rut of indecision that they are willing to accept any moral compromise.
Without even making any moral compromise, the state of indecisiveness itself is an indication of spiritual decay in at least two ways. First, the feeling that decisive action could and should come from the reasoning capacities of man is an act of terrible pride. Secondly, the reliance on reasoning is a deliberate suppression of the directions provided by the heart. The reliance on reason combined with the inter-related sin of pride are the reasons for the profound egocentric’s great spiritual jeopardy.
The basic immorality of reason is one of Dostoevsky’s most recurrent themes. Dostoevsky always reminds us that reason can prove and disprove at the same time. Anything that relates to fact, science or reason is endlessly described as cutting both ways. Facts are fine but “…evidence, you know, old man, cuts both ways for the most part.” Science is fine but, “the point is all this damned psychology cuts both ways.” (Crime and Punishment, p. 287, 383) It is the inability of reason to find truth that causes the profound egocentric’s indecisiveness.
The use of reason leads the profound egocentric to abstract philosophy, a realization that nothing can be definitely known and a discovery of many ideas and principals in contradiction to the existence of God and Christian teachings. The profound egocentric’s ability to reason, itself, leads to pride and feelings of superiority.
Reasoning also causes the profound egocentric to live life through abstract philosophy rather than through the heart. It is impossible, according to Dostoevsky, to lead a successful life through reason because man is not a rational animal. The character Lebezyatnikov in Crime and Punishment is a satiric mouthpiece for the naïve way of thinking, characteristic of social engineer types, that presumes man is a rational creature that need only be shown the most advantageous course of action to live in eternal happiness:
…if you convince a man logically that he has nothing to cry for he will stop crying…do you know that in Paris they have been doing serious experiments on the possibility of curing the mad by the use of nothing but logical persuasion? A professor there, who died recently, a serious scientist, thought they could be cured in this way. His basic idea was that there is no specific organic disorder in lunatics, but that madness is, so to speak, a logical mistake, a mistake of judgment, and incorrect view of things. ( Crime and Punishment , p. 358)
Lebezyatnikov, like Raskolnikov, tries to apply reason to human problems. According to Dostoevsky, any system that is derived purely from reason and is applied to human affairs is innately evil. Logical systems designed to govern the affairs of men (like socialism), are, no matter how beneficial and humanitarian they may seem, as intrinsically evil as Raskolnikov’s idea and action. The fact that Raskolnikov’s system of thinking had murder of an old woman as a corollary is absolutely irrelevant. Raskolnikov reasons,
…how was my idea more stupid than any of the other ideas and theories that have sprung up and multiplied like weeds all over the world, ever since the world existed? One need only look at the matter with a broad and completely independent mind, free from all the common influences, for my ideas not to seem so very…strange. ( Crime and Punishment , p. 459)
If Raskolnikov’s reasoning had led to the conclusion that he should spend his life helping retarded children, it would still be just as much of a rebellion against God. What damns Raskolnikov, like so many of the other profound egocentrics in Dostoevsky, is one of the supreme acts of pride – deciding human reasoning can discover moral truths. The profound egocentric’s use of reason is what brings his ultimate spiritual downfall. The investigator, Porfiry Petrovich, sums up the profound egocentric’s problem.
…you my dear Rodion Romanovich (excuse an old man), are still a young man, in your first youth, so to speak, and therefore you esteem the human intellect above all things, like all young people. Abstract reasoning and the play of wit tempt you astray.” ( Crime and Punishment , p. 288)
What must be substituted for reason is direct, unquestioning faith. Dostoevsky writes in his notebook for Crime and Punishment, “The characters of arithmetic kill, and direct faith saves.” (Crime and Punishment, p. 474) Direct faith must come from the heart, not from the intellect or from worldly evidence. Ivan Karamazov’s internal demon uses the truth to bring Ivan to despair over his lack of direct faith, “…what’s the good of believing, especially material proofs. Thomas believed, not because he saw Christ risen, but because he wanted to believe, before he saw.” (Brothers Karamazov, p. 774) Alyosha explains to Ivan how life should be led:
“Love life more than the meaning of it?”
“Certainly, love it, regardless of logic as you say, it must be regardless of logic, and it’s only then one will understand the meaning of it.” (Brothers Karamazov, p. 274)
The profound egocentric’s problem is that he follows his head and not his heart. The profound egocentric’s very personality is a rebellion against God. The profound egocentric is, after all, the creator and occupant of his own world, with its own independently arrived-at moral values.
Raskolnikov’s spiritual salvation comes about only when he stops thinking about life and living internally, and starts feeling life and responding directly. Dostoevsky describes the new Raskolnikov:
…he could not think long or coherently of anything or concentrate his attention on any idea, and indeed he was not consciously reasoning at all; he could only feel. Life had taken the place of logic and something quite different must be worked out in his mind. ( Crime and Punishment , p. 464)
The transformation we see above, however, is the ultimate failure of Crime and Punishment. In an earlier version of the book, Dostoevsky had Raskolnikov commit suicide. In the final version he doesn’t fare much better. The very basis of Raskolnikov’s personality is destroyed. The profound egocentric cannot stop thinking any more than he can stop breathing. Raskolnikov is not regenerated or reborn but simply written out of the book.
One could argue that it was Dostoevsky’s sincere belief that, through the grace of God, a complete personality breakdown and rebirth is possible. I have no doubt that this was Dostoevsky’s belief, and I am not making a judgment on the validity of the concept of rebirth. What is significant for the purpose of this paper is that Dostoevsky had no faith in Raskolnikov’s transformation.
There are at least four indications that Dostoevsky was not being honest with himself about Raskolnikov’s transformation. First, as we approach Raskolnikov’s regeneration the book becomes increasingly third person and remote. The narrator that we are scarcely conscious of previously, is suddenly moving towards the foreground and Raskolnikov towards the background. Second, we notice that Raskolnikov’s final inspirational dream is not organic and ambiguous like all the previous dreams, but strikingly artificial and direct. The dream is really not a dream, but a philosophical metaphor, and obviously the creation of a conscious mind. Third, Dostoevsky tells us in his closing paragraph that there is, “…the gradual renewal of a man, of his gradual regeneration, of his slow progress from one world to another…,” but Raskolnikov’s transformation is not slow or gradual, it is abrupt and total. On one page, Raskolnikov is Raskolnikov, the profound egocentric, and on the next page he is his antithesis – a divine idiot. Fourth and finally, after the turning point is reached, we are given no realistic examples of the new Raskolnikov’s behavior, and in fact, the book ends fourteen lines later.
The spiritual fall the profound egocentric goes through is inevitable, but so is an awareness and dissatisfaction with his spiritual state. The profound egocentric’s spiritual turmoil becomes all-consuming. Ivan Karamazov’s internal demon advises him, “…hesitation, suspense, conflict between belief and disbelief – is sometimes such torture to a conscientious man, such as you are, that it’s better to hang oneself at once.” (Brothers Karamazov, p. 784) The most tormenting awareness, for the profound egocentric, may be an awareness of the good that is still within his soul. The profound egocentric can be driven to despair over the realization of his not having actualized his potential for good. The narrator of Notes From Underground describes that sort of despair:
I never could become a spiteful man. I was always conscious of innumerable elements in me which were absolutely contrary to that. I felt them simply swarming in me all my life and asking to come out, but I wouldn’t let them. They tormented me to the point of making me ashamed of myself… ( Notes From Underground , p. 265)
Spiritual turmoil, however, is infinitely better than spiritual apathy. The profound egocentric’s dissatisfaction and awareness of the disorder in his own soul is a major step forward. What is more subtle, however, is that this spiritual self-awareness can lead nowhere by itself. Spiritual self-awareness is once again an internal exploration; an exploration that will not in itself find God and that will not by itself do anything for the profound egocentric. The only thing this self-exploration can do is make the profound egocentric aware that his soul is in a state that he, himself, can never rectify. After that point the profound egocentric must humble himself before God, beg for forgiveness and be reborn.
If the profound egocentrism does not take the final religious step, however, the spiritual self-awareness can become the most destructive force in his personality. A self-awareness of the blackness within his own soul and no channel for expunging it leads the profound egocentric to think depravity a necessary result of his nature, make no effort to restrain it, and despair completely.
The profound egocentric’s ultimate spiritual problem is that he approaches everything internally. Dostoevsky, in a letter to his brother, says of himself that, “The exterior must keep a steady balance with the interior . Otherwise, in the absence of exterior phenomena, the interior will assume too dangerous an upper hand.” (Mochulsky, p. 75) Dostoevsky does not believe man can find salvation inside of himself. The profound egocentric’s internal journey takes him farther and farther from God and the truth. The profound egocentric must break out of himself and destroy his own ego to be at one with God.
The characteristics and behaviors of the profound egocentric differ widely in degree. These differences in degree can be roughly explained by the consideration of five variables and five stages of development.
The first variable is intelligence. Profound egocentrism requires high intelligence, but some profound egocentrics may be more or less intelligent than others. Generally, the greater the intelligence the greater the complexity and magnitude of symptoms. The second variable is intellectual development – how much thinking the profound egocentric has done, and how much reason and philosophy have distorted his mind. The third variable is spiritual state. There is a direct relationship between the intensity of most of the symptoms and spiritual turmoil. The fourth variable is environmental stress. Raskolnikov and Ivan, for example, are under great environmental stress while the narrator of Notes From Underground and Dolgoruky are recalling events in relative tranquility. The fifth variable is stage of development. The intensity of the symptoms, and the variety and type of symptoms are greatly affected by the profound egocentric’s stage of development.
The five stages of development reflect increasing intellectualization, abstraction, detachment from reality and pride. The first stage of development is infantile egocentrism. This is egocentrism without reason or intellectualization. The second stage of development is the dream world. Here thought and creative mental effort cause a withdrawal from the world and an immersion into romantic fantasy. The profound egocentric in this stage, however, dwells more upon creative thought and mental imagery than abstract reasoning. Most significantly, the profound egocentric at this stage has not yet tried to apply reason to questions or morality.
The third stage of development is the period of the idea. This stage is marked by a total absorption in abstract reasoning and the creation or discovery of complex logical concepts. A monomania involving one idea or system of thought will usually dominate this stage. Raskolnikov’s moral superman, Dolgoruky’s, “idea” and possibly Ivan’s Grand Inquisitor are all examples.
The fourth stage of development I term doubt and breakdown. This stage of development is marked by a destructive inversion of reason. At this stage there are no new ideas created and the old ones are being doubted or destroyed. This process of doubting, disproving and destroying eventually carries over to all levels of the profound egocentric’s being. As the pieces of the abstract, intellectual world of the profound egocentric are removed, he must retreat further and further into his own being. The profound egocentric then goes through the process of doubting the reality of the outside world, doubting the reality of his inner world (his sanity) and finally doubting his very existence. The profound egocentric can no longer resolve himself and there must be a complete breakdown.
The breakdown can result in suicide or complete insanity, or it can result in the fifth and final stage of development – regeneration. Through the power of faith, and the grace of God, the personality is rebuilt with emphasis on direct feelings and the heart, and a de-emphasis on reason.
Notes From Underground merits individual consideration because it represents Dostoevsky’s most developed profound egocentric, and because it contains Dostoevsky’s most ambitious attempt to explain his “underground men” as his critics call the, “men of heightened consciousness” as Dostoevsky calls them and profound egocentrics as I have, perhaps too clinically, defined them.
(I have decided to analyze the book in its own order to preserve something of the flow of ideas and system of development in the original.)
Chapter I :   Dostoevsky begins Notes From Underground, with a long footnote that explains that people like the narrator (profound egocentrics), are the natural result of a morally decadent society. Profound egocentrism to Dostoevsky was a disease that highly intelligent men in a moral vacuum are susceptible to. Dostoevsky explains that,
…people like the author of these notes may, and indeed must, exist in our society, if we think of the circumstances under which that society has been formed. (p. 90)
The narrator begins by comparing the profound egocentric to the “man of action.” The man of action is simple where the profound egocentric is mind-bogglingly complex, stupid where he is highly intelligent, a one-dimensional, one-track thinker where he is a multi-dimensional one and above all decisive while he is indecisive. (In 2006 I can’t help but be reminded of George W. Bush who calls himself “the decider” and who brags, like his father, that he doesn’t psychoanalyze himself and that, “I only look in the mirror when I shave.”  He has also bragged that he doesn’t think about history because, “I’m the guy out there making history.”)  In the narrator’s own words:
…an intelligent man cannot turn himself into anything…only a fool can make anything he wants out of himself…an intelligent man of the nineteenth century is bound to be a spineless creature, while the man of character, the man of action, is, in most cases, of limited intelligence. (p. 92)
Chapter II : The narrator discusses the agonies of “acute consciousness” or “lucidity” (as it is variously translated), which the profound egocentric by his very nature must suffer from:
I swear that too great a lucidity is a disease, a true, full-fledged disease. For everyday needs, the average person’s awareness is more than sufficient, and it is about a half or a quarter of that of the unhappy nineteenth-century intellectual, particularly if he’s unfortunate enough to live in Petersburg, the most abstract and premeditated city on earth (there are premeditated and unpremeditated cities), The extent of consciousness at the disposal of what may be termed the spontaneous people and the men of action is sufficient. (p. 93)
In the discussion of lucidity the narrator mentions the importance of Petersburg. Petersburg is the ideal environment and reflection of the profound egocentric. The city was an artificial creation of man (it was conceived on paper before construction), and is the ideal physical representation of man’s world, set up as a rebellion against God. Dostoevsky’s descriptions of Petersburg’s decay and decadence are reflections of the moral and spiritual decay of Petersburg society. Petersburg is the only place the profound egocentric can feel at home and is where almost all of Dostoevsky’s writing takes place. The narrator insists on living in Petersburg, despite all the inconvenience, and yet he isn’t sure why:
They tell me that the Petersburg climate is bad for me and that, with my miserable income, it’s a very expensive place to live. I know all that myself. I know it better than all my would-be advisers. But I’m going to stay in Petersburg ! I won’t leave! I won’t leave because…
Ah, it’s really all the same whether I go or stay. (p. 93)
In the same chapter, the narrator tells us that when he is most aware of the “sublime and the beautiful” he is most capable of debauchery. An awareness of what is good and beautiful makes the profound egocentric aware of how fallen he is by contrast. Also, the narrator’s awareness of the sublime and the beautiful indicates something of those qualities inside himself. The narrator then subjects himself to the despair that results from contemplating potential for good that was never actualized:
Now tell me this: why, just when I was most capable of being conscious of every refinement of the “good and the beautiful,” as they used to put it once upon a time,…were there moments when I…did such ugly things – things that everyone does probably, but that I precisely did at moments when I was aware that they shouldn’t be done.
The more conscious I was of “the good and the beautiful,” the deeper I sank into the mud, and the more likely I was to remain mired in it. (p. 94)
Directly following this the narrator makes one of his attempts to describe his “strange, elusive pleasure.” This pleasure we are led to understand is, “so subtle, so evasive, that even slightly limited people, or people who simply have strong nerves, won’t understand the first thing about it.” The pleasure is extremely elusive and hard to understand as the narrator admits, but it is, when we analyze its nature, of great moral significance.
I mentioned before, in my section on the collapse of internal reality, that Dostoevsky was terribly afraid of determinism. Much of Notes From Underground is a struggle with the deterministic concept of man. This pleasure, ironically, results from an unconscious embracing of deterministic thinking. If man has free will, then he is guilty of everything wrong doing. If man does not have free will, as determinism insists, then he has no need to blame himself.
The narrator, by convincing himself that a profound egocentric, by his very nature, must have a moral fall, is absolving himself of guilt. The pleasure results from the easing of self-reproach and a stoic acceptance of faults:
I derived pleasure precisely from the blinding realization of my degradation; because I felt that I was already up against the wall; that it was horrible but couldn’t be otherwise; that there was no way out and it was no longer possible to make myself into a different person; that even if there were still enough time and faith left to become different, I wouldn’t want to change myself…Finally, the most important point is that there’s a set of fundamental laws to which heightened consciousness is subject so that there’s no changing oneself or for that matter, doing anything about it. Thus as a result of heightened consciousness a man feels that it’s all right if he’s bad as long as he knows it – (p. 95)
One further revelation made in this chapter is that the narrator is self-conscious and is actually aware of his own self-consciousness: “I, for instance, am horribly sensitive. I’m suspicious and easily offended, like a dwarf or a hunchback.” (p. 95) From the above, we can see another example of the profound egocentric reaching self-awareness and yet not benefiting from it in the least.
Chapter IV: In this chapter more examples are given of the narrator’s self-consciousness, self-awareness and self-hatred. The inseparable relationship between the three becomes clearer:
Of course my jokes are in poor taste, inappropriate, and confused; they reveal my lack of security. But that is because I have no respect for myself. After all, how can a man of my lucidity of perception respect himself?
Part II:        The narrator flashes back to an incident that happened sixteen years ago. He describes himself as being at the time, “painfully sensitive and complex, as a man of this age should be.” And leading the “gloomy, solitary existence of a recluse. I stayed away from people, avoided even speaking to them, and kept more and more to my hole. At the office, I avoided looking at anyone; I realized that others regarded me…so, at least, I felt – viewed me with a sort of disgust.” (p. 124-125) He goes on to say that he was worried that, “I was unlike everyone else, and they were unlike me. ‘I’m all alone while there are a lot of them.’ (p. 126) The narrator then reveals that he was a dreamer at the time:
I had an escape that made everything bearable; I took refuge in the “sublime and the beautiful” – in my dreams of course.
I gave myself over entirely to dreaming – dreaming away for three months on end, huddled in my corner. (p. 136)
Chapter X :    At the end of Notes From Underground we see a conflict between subject and author again as in Crime and Punishment but this time with the author trying to suppress the reality of the subject. Dostoevsky wrote Notes From Underground with the idea in mind of demonstrating the decadence and hopeless depravity of the profound egocentric or man of “heightened consciousness.” A happy ending, therefore, or even a slightly hopeful one, would be self-defeating (of his conscious intention). The character, however, has taken on enough life on his own that he goes beyond the purpose assigned to him in the book. The character, at the very end, begins to show signs of regeneration. Dostoevsky tries to suppress those signs, but fortunately, he’s not successful.
When we reach the end of Notes From Underground the narrator has found no answers and discovered no path to follow. Somehow, though, we get a feeling of hope. Through all the depravity, humiliation, bitterness and cynicism there is a light. Where that light comes from is hard to say. I think Notes From Underground is autobiographical enough that it is Dostoevsky’s own hope for himself. There is no hint at the end of the novel of the kind of hope and rebirth Raskolnikov supposedly found. There is, however, a feeling of a pause for reflection, a realization of all the dead ends, and perhaps one more attempt to find the right direction.
When the narrator winds down his account with “But that’s enough, I’ve had enough of writing these Notes From Underground.” We get the feeling that he has gone as far as he can go inside of himself. He’s decided to stop writing and perhaps he will now head in  a new direction. Dostoevsky apparently attempts to squelch the hopeful tone at the end of the book with an editorial comment, “Actually the notes of this lover of paradoxes do not end here. He couldn’t resist and went on writing. But we are of the opinion that one might just as well stop here.” The implication, of course, is that the character never resolves himself. This editorial comment, however, is a contradiction of the instinctive emotional feeling that the end generates.
I think Dostoevsky could have spiritually resolved this character and given him a new faith without the character losing his identity. Dostoevsky, while writing this novel, was at a very low point in his life, but he managed to pull through. Maybe Notes From Underground was the inner reflection that he needed as well as its narrator. It is my feeling that Dostoevsky put so much of himself into Notes From Underground, and so much of the negative side of his personality, that once he stepped outside the character, he immediately hated him and condemned him. Dostoevsky shows the character’s potential for spiritual regeneration through himself. Dostoevsky never stopped thinking about life and just feeling, and he never stopped doubting, but he did find a faith, no matter how shaky it was. That is the type of regeneration the narrator of Notes From Underground and the profound egocentrics are capable of. The essential beauty of Dostoevsky’s writings is the realization that even for these twisted, “men from underground,” submerged in their own reflections and bitterness, there is still hope.
The profound egocentric is by no means a phenomenon unique to Dostoevsky. Profound egocentrics are among the most developed characters in all literature. Two examples that readily come to mind are Hamlet and J. Alfred Prufrock.
I am hardly the first person to point out the relationship between many of Dostoevsky’s characters and Hamlet. Dostoevsky, himself, constantly compared several of his characters (all profound egocentrics) to Hamlet and so do his critics. There are references to “contemporary Hamletanism” in Dostoevsky’s characters, and the natural association between Hamlet the profound egocentric appears strong.
Hamlet is, first of all, a product of a morally decadent society, as all profound egocentrics seem to be. Hamlet’s line, “The time is out of joint” is used by one of Dostoevsky’s best critics as the most concise possible description of the kind of environment that results in profound egocentrics,
The words of Hamlet: “The time is out of joint” could have served as an epigraph to the novel. Mankind has abandoned God and been left alone on earth. Together with the idea of God the unity of the world is also out of joint. Mankind no longer forms a single family, all have been separated; fraternal communion has been replaced by hostility, harmony by disorder. (Mochulsky, p. 505)
When Hamlet refers to Denmark as a prison, he is referring to much more than his physical entrapment. He is in a moral trap, as are so many of Dostoevsky’s characters. The moral dilemma that he faces in Denmark is only the worst of many he must face in life,
Hamlet:           Denmark ’s a prison.
Rosencrantz:     Then is the world one.
Hamlet:     A goodly one; in which there are many confines, wards and dungeons, Denmark being one o’ the worst. (Act II: Sc II, lines 249-53)
Hamlet shows many other characteristics of profound egocentrism besides a morally decadent background. He is constantly berating himself for his failure to take action. This was one quality that Dostoevsky identified with especially. In 1838 he wrote to his brother, “…How fainthearted is that creature man! Hamlet! Hamlet!” Just as the man from underground is almost incapable of revenge because of his conscience combined with reasoning, so, too, is Hamlet,
Thus conscience does make cowards of us all;
And thus the native hue of resolution
Is sicklied over with pale cast of thought,
And enterprises of great pitch and moment,
With this regard their currents turn awry,
And lose the name of action.
(Act III: Sc I, lines 83-88)
Hamlet eventually tries to rebel against his own indecisiveness and become a man of action , “O, from this time forth, /let my thoughts be bloody, or be nothing worth!”
Hamlet reproaches himself for being a “John-a-dreams”, but he is basically the profound egocentric in the doubt-breakdown stage. He has no hope of getting anywhere in this world:
How weary, stale, flat and unprofitable,
Seem to me all the uses of this world!
(Act I: Sc II, lines 133-4)
J. Alfred Prufrock (“The love song of J. Alfred Prufrock” a poem by T. S. Eliot) is another human byproduct of a morally decadent society, another “Waste Land.” He is an obvious example of the profound egocentric in the doubt-breakdown stage. He has no direction and nowhere to look for one. He is self-aware, self-conscious, introspective and withdrawn. He is not even a Prince Hamlet he tells us, for at least Hamlet had energy.
He is in the equivalent social class of one of Dostoevsky’s government clerks. He is not unlike Golyadkin; he is respectable, in an average sort of way and stays out of everyone’s way. His world is constraining, emasculated and as close to nature and real life as a plastic clock-radio.
His world is also utterly devoid of decisiveness or action. There is always, “time yet for a hundred indecisions,” and “there will be time/To wonder, ‘Do I dare?’ and ‘Do I Dare?’” His relations with people are artificial, remote, and standardized for, “there will be time/To prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet;” There will be time for petty self-consciousness too, “They will say: ‘How his hair is growing thin!’” and “They will say: ‘But how his arms and legs are thin!”
His desire is to do something, to be something or even to become something. Just as the Underground Man would like to be an insect, just to be something real and definite, J. Alfred Prufrock would like, “to have been a pair of ragged claws/Scuttling across the floors of silent seas.”
What I would like to do now is turn around what I have demonstrated about the nature of the profound egocentric, as a literary creation and see what he can reveal about his creator.
As I have demonstrated throughout my paper, Dostoevsky created his profound egocentrics after his own image. If Dostoevsky was a profound egocentric, what does that suggest about him, as an artist and perhaps about the artistic process in general?
It is my belief that there are two basic methods for creating a literary character. Those two methods are the internal and the external. With the external approach the artist maintains his own sense of self-identity or I while he is creating his character. With the internal approach the creator loses his sense of self-identity and becomes the character while he is creating him. There are of course many shades in between – an artist may step out of his internal character to get a more objective look at him, and an artist might try stepping into an external character to get a feel for him. There is nothing terribly new about this idea of characters being divisible into internal and external ones, but it is an idea very relevant to the present discussion.
Dostoevsky, as his personality matured and he began to have closer relationships with people, probably developed a reasonably strong sense of other. An increase in the sense of other would not necessarily have an inverse effect on the sense of I. Providing his sense of I with an external frame of reference would allow for new growth. Dostoevsky’s process of self-exploration would continue and his understanding of his own inner world would increase.
The addition of a frame of reference to Dostoevsky’s supremely developed and explored inner world enabled him to go as deeply into human nature as anyone has ever gone. The question is, how did Dostoevsky apply his vast self-knowledge to his characters? The answer, I believe, is that Dostoevsky’s fantastically strong sense of I allowed him to assume the identity of his creations, and with total insight and penetration. The only limitation of this ability is that Dostoevsky’s intelligence and sense of I were so powerful that they had to be carried through during the transformation of identities. Hence, all the characters that Dostoevsky takes an internal approach to, and whose identity he assumes, must share his intelligence and exaggerated sense of I, and therefore his profound egocentrism.
One of Dostoevsky’s critics points out an incident in which Dostoevsky’s assumption of a character’s identity seems to have carried over to real life. Dostoevsky had appealed to the trustee of his father’s estate for unnecessary sums of money. This trustee was described as an “evangelically good man” and he did everything he could for Dostoevsky. When this man refused Dostoevsky his last request, for Dostoevsky’s own sake,
Dostoevsky became enraged and denounced his rich relation. His letter resounds with savage irony. He dramatizes his own situation, describing himself as sick, impoverished, and dying of hunger. At this time he was working on his first novel Poor People , and almost imperceptibly he transformed himself into his hero, the half-starved civil servant Makar Devushkin. In a good-natured fashion Karepin admonished and tried to reform him; Dostoevsky retorted with malicious sarcasm. The trustee’s reproaches, and they were fully deserved, wounded Dostoevsky’s self-pride. The novelist’s impression converted this honorable philanthropist into the figure of an exploiting bourgeois. Literature and reality were merged into one. The future author of Poor People had been aroused and inflamed by social pathos and Karepin became the victim of his accusations. (Mochulsky, p. 20)
Here is an excerpt from that letter:
You have tormented me, humiliated me; you have mocked me. I have borne it all with patience; I have contracted debts; I have used up all my money. I have endured shame and grief; I have endured sickness, hunger, and cold. (Mochulsky, p. 20-21)
I disagree with Mochulsky, however, in assuming that it was Makar Devushkin whose identity was assumed. I suspect that Dostoevsky assumed the identity of a suffering, martyred, underdog-identity enabling offensive, aggressive behaviors to appear totally defensive. A politician with a Quaker background, for example, whose superego would not tolerate aggressiveness, might need just such a mechanism in order to function in a position of power. (Younger readers might not recognize this as a diss of Richard Nixon who was a Quaker and who fluctuated between aggression and self pity. Nixon showed many symptoms of profound geocentricism, and one historian who read his personal journals described them as tormented and reading like Dostoevsky.   —Jonathan, 2006)
The range and depth of Dostoevsky’s writings, is equaled only by life itself. Any attempt to view Dostoevsky’s works through one concept or perspective, will lead to a very limited and distorted vision. The concept of profound egocentrism is not a final solution to all the complex motivations and behaviors of Dostoevsky’s characters, but rather one answer among many. With a proper realization of its values and limitation, profound egocentrism can prove a valuable perspective for a more complete understanding of Dostoevsky’s writings and literature in general.

(I am omitting the end notes to discourage potential plagiarists)

© 2006 by Jonathan Zap

The phenomenon of “energy sappers,” of people who are energy drainers, is well known to many from real life experience.  The most insightful discussion of the subject I have to date encountered is in Breakthrough to Creativity, a wonderful book on parapsychology which was copyrighted in 1967 by Shafica Karagulla, MD. By an odd non coincidence, Dr. Karagulla was George Noory’s (of Coast -to-Coast AM fame) aunt.  Unfortunately, Dr. Karagulla’s life was cut short by a car accident and we lost a leading pioneer in parapsychological research.

The discussion of “energy sappers” is to be found in a chapter entitled, “Energy Fields Around Human Beings.”

Dr. Karagulla summarizes the testimony of “sensitives” she has investigated and found a consensus in their descriptions of classic human energy states.  For example, she notes that,

Sensitives observe that certain activities, ideas or experiences seem to increase the inflow of energy into the field of a given individual.  When an individual comes into the presence of a well-beloved person all three of his energy fields are intensely brightened. He appears to have more energy of a bright and scintillating quality in these fields.  This is very apparent in comparison with his usual energy field.  A purely physical sex emotion appears to “muddy’ the emotional field and dull the mental field.

Some people show a brightened energy field under the stimulus of interesting intellectual conversation.  In these cases it appears to be the mental field which first receives an inflow of energy and the effect spreads to the emotional and vital fields.  The fields of the individual can be observed as they change, often from a rather mediocre state of brightness to a vital and scintillating state.  This can happen very quickly with a highly intelligent person who responds with sensitive enthusiasm to the world of ideas.  Actually the person appears to those around him to become more vivacious and energetic. The sensitive is aware of what has happened in the energy fields around such an individual. The ordinary observer is simply aware of a new enthusiasm in the individual.

The sensitives observe, with people more identified with themselves as the “Emotional I” the emotional field seems to be the first entry point for energy.  Often the emotionally focused individual likes to stir up emotional scenes with those around him.  When he does this the sensitive observes a brightening of the emotional and vital fields with little observable effect on the mental field. Those involved in the emotional scene often appear depleted and seem to lose energy.  The individual creating the scene appears to achieve a sense of well-being and to be energized.

The same sources provided Dr. Karagulla with insights into energy sappers,

A number of the sensitives with whom I have worked have made repeated observations on individuals which we have come to designate as the “Sappers.”  There are certain people who do not seem to be able to pick up their own energy from the surrounding ocean of energy which the sensitives describe. They appear to take their energy “pre-digested” from the people in their immediate vicinity. The sensitives see and describe this process.  A number of the best sensitives with whom I have worked have given exactly similar descriptions.  After much psychological and psychiatric observation, I have discovered that those whom the sensitives and I have come to call “sappers” are practically always very self-centered individuals.

The sensitive describes the sappers as having closed in energy fields.  Such individuals may be totally unaware of their energy pull on other people. They may simply feel better when they are in the company of more vital people.  Any individual who remains in the vicinity of the sapper for too long begins to feel desperately exhausted for no reason that he can understand.  This baffles and bewilders him.  Eventually a deep instinct of self-preservation causes the victim of the sapper to feel an irresistible desire to get away.  He may attribute this to any one of a number of reasons. By the time this happens he is usually feeling an unreasoning irritation with the sapper.

As soon as the victim of the sapper has escaped and begins to feel better, he looks at his recent behavior as being rather unreasonable.  He blames himself for being irritable with no apparent cause…On the part of the victim this cycle of escape, self censure and return for another energy pull is repeated over and over again…

Some of these sappers pull energy from almost anyone in their vicinity.  Others seem to be able to pull energy more easily from only certain people.  The simply selfish person who wants things for himself or the attention of other people is not usually a sapper.  He may be exasperating for other reasons.  It is the self-centered person enclosed in his own orbit who lacks outgoingness to other people and the outside world.  He seems to shut off his contact with the ocean of energy around him.  Kay once referred to this type of individual as a psychological parasite, using the mental, emotional and vital energies of other people.

Dr. Karagulla asked the sensitives to carefully observe the energy bodies of those involved in sapping,

Further observations and experiments on this problem of the sapper gave some more detailed insight. Since this phenomenon produces a very definite effect on the physical energy, I asked the sensitives to observe the vortices of energy which they see in the energy or vital body.  It developed that the energy pull from a victim is usually via the weakest vortex.  An individual with a disturbed energy vortex at the heart area appears to lose energy by way of that particular vortex…

It developed that there are classic methods that sappers use to sap energy,

There are several methods, according to the sensitives, by which sappers may pull energy.  Some sappers appear to pull energy by using the voice.  The extremely self-centered person who is a compulsive talker pulls the energy of his victim, whose attention he has gained, simply by talking.  If the victim listens long enough his vital field and even his emotional and mental fields will begin to wilt, grow dull and show a general condition which to the sensitive means he is very exhausted.  The more exhausted he becomes the more difficult it is for him to exert the will force to escape.

Some sappers appear to use the eyes to pull energy.  They look with a quiet, steady, unbroken focus at their victim.  The victim gradually becomes tired, restless, has an unreasoning desire to escape, and may begin to be irritable.  When this type of sapper is part of a group the discomfort to any one victim is slight and his effect on the people present is therefore less apparent.

The sensitives also note that,

Those in an already weakened state always seem to be more distressed and easily drained by the sapper.

Two sensitives, independent of each other, provide similar detailed pictures of what’s happening energetically,

The sensitives describe a rather wide opening in the solar plexus area of the sapper in his vital field.  Around the edges of this opening streamers or tentacles appear to shoot out and hook into the field of an individual in close proximity.  The sapper often seems to have a desire to touch the person whom he is draining of energy or else to be as near as possible to him.  There is a whole group of sappers who drain other people in this way simply by being near them.  Those who drain their victims by the use of the voice or the eyes do not need to be in such close proximity.

Dr. Karagulla observes of the sappers,

A psychological evaluation of the sapper shows an individual who often speaks the language of altruism volubly.  He will often talk a great deal about his concern and kindly interest in friends and acquaintances who are his victims.  He will assure you that he would do anything for them, that they are wonderful people and they do him so much good.  It requires some careful observation to realize that the sapper is nearly always extremely self-centered. He probably does not realize this himself, and he may be completely unaware of what he actually does to other people around him.

Dr. Karagulla’s findings closely parallel my own observations.  Brad (not his real name) is the most consistent energy sapper I know. He will tend to gravitate toward the most high vitality persons in a social setting, stand or sit very close to them and make eye contact and initiate very mechanical conversation speaking in a monotone.  Typically he will intrude on a lively conversation others are having and derail it by asking the most obvious of questions, forcing the flow of energy in the conversation towards himself.  Intuitively, it becomes obvious that he is not really interested in the content of the conversation, but in redirecting it  energetically so that everyone is addressing him and his inane questions.

The last time I encountered Brad I was waiting on line at a coffee shop and he came up behind me, out of my field of view, and struck me on my back.  It felt like he was shocking my body/psyche/energy body out of a state of encapsulated, protected introversion and into a state where he could drain energy.  From the first time I encountered Brad he was overly friendly and consistently flatters me even though I typically greet him coolly, even coldly.  During the entire time I have known him (about ten years), I have always felt a very strong urge to escape every time he attempts to engage me in conversation.  I used to feel I was being needlessly brusque or rude, but now I realize I am responding to bodily intuition and am having an immunological aversion to him.

Parasitism is one of the most common relationships in nature.  According to National Geographic, parasites outnumber all other species on this planet four or five to one.  We should not be surprised to find human parasites.  An implication of my first hand account of an encounter with a vampire (see Mind Parasites, Energy Parasites and Vampires ), is that human parasites may be hosts to discarnate parasites which work through them.  For more on the larger context in which energy sapping occurs see the mind parasite  section of this website.  Go the audio player on the main page of this site to listen to my most comprehensive work on the subject, Mind Parasite Matrix.

© 2006 by Jonathan Zap   revised  2008

Edited by Austin Iredale

The following is a slightly adapted journal entry, and when I write for myself I tend to do so in a highly dense manner, but I hope this will still be accessible because it relates to a phenomenon that affects most of our lives.  Emotionally intense experiences, life phases, and relationships, tend to form timelines that continue in the unconscious, and sometimes these alternate timelines can enrich the soul, and other times they can divert massive amounts of psychic energy away from our being fully engaged with the present.

Last night’s dream was a variation on a dream I have had many times before, where there seems to be an extremely emotionally charged recapitulation of the timeline related to my teaching on Long Island , from which I departed in 1995. The details are hard to convey, and if languaged would not seem to justify the emotional intensity.  That particular year was such a huge bifurcation for me, and my call to adventure involved genuine sacrifices that continue to reverberate—I gave up both complete economic security and also daily work with kids.  But this choice was one that absolutely had to be made, and when these dreams occur it feels like I am experiencing both the pain of the sacrifice and also the pain that would have been involved had I continued on that timeline, pain that seems, in dreamtime, to have a momentum toward tragic outcomes, a timeline where I miss my destiny.  It appears that the life I led had built up so much psychic momentum that it continues to create its own emotionally charged timeline in dreamtime even though in June it will be 13 years since I have left it in the waking life.

Intuition is guiding me in a different direction now though, asking me where the emotion of the dream is trying to take me.  It seems to be showing me an image of the past timeline, and past desires, as though they are adhesions (the little strings of connective tissue that constrict flexibility of the body) constricting the expansion of my soul.  As I realize this I can feel some of these adhesions being torn away.  As they begin to release, I experience an intensity of catharsis that seems a lesser version of what some near death experiencers report about the life review.   The dreams are exposing emotional adhesions that can keep me from fully bonding to this timeline, from fully embracing the present moment, keeping me in a disassociated state as energy is diverted into maintaining other timelines in the unconscious.

The classic example of this is someone living one life, while at the same time holding on to a lost romance or departed (through death) significant other.  They typically self medicate, and live only partially in the waking timeline, as large parts of their energetic/emotional bodies remain committed to a timeline that continues in the unconscious.  The answer, for me at least, being highlighted by intuition, is to allow tearing away of these adhesions so as to more fully bond to the present timeline.

Adhesions to lost relationships can divert energy from relationships that are actually present.  One reason why teaching maintains such persistent psychic momentum that its timeline continues in the unconscious, is that it involved so many moments of vivid presence.  Relating to kids, teaching a class of some thirty students, forces presence because there is so much psychic energy present that disassociation (except in the case of really bad teachers) is almost impossible.  People who live a disassociated life working in a cubicle, etc. may find that the timelines of high school, college, or military service— periods when they had more intense bonding to a group— continue and become a subject of nostalgic reverie or spontaneous recollection.  Similarly, traumatic events like war trauma involve moments of such absolute presence and terror that they retain psychic momentum and their timeline continues in the unconscious, ready to erupt into the waking consciousness at moments of disassociation.  These sorts of visitations from the past are not likely to happen when highly present, say when you are engrossed in a conversation with someone, but are more likely to happen when alone, when in a twilight state, or a state of intoxication.

High level fantasy writing (and fiction writing in general) involves the investment of emotional energy into a timeline that is not generated by the long shadow of sentimental attachment, but that is continued in the unconscious erupting episodically into the conscious.   Anne Rice, for example, went into an alcoholic depression when she lost her daughter.  She came out of it by writing Interview with a Vampire . Energy from the timeline related to her lost child was diverted into intense fantasy timelines.

For the creative person, energy needs to flow into alternate creative timelines. Conversely, mind parasites prefer energy to remain fixed into stagnant timelines which generate negative energies they can suck on, like marrow remaining in an old bone.  A poor diet feeds these corroded timelines because their low quality of vibration more readily accepts the low vibratory quality of inferior nourishment.

This tendency can be readily illustrated by an example familiar to anyone: We have an old drunk at a bar,  and at a certain phase of his drunkenness the present dissolves and he reminisces about emotionally charged events from the past. Eventually the present audience dissolves into a blur as well, and whether anyone in a present timeline is engaged or not, he continues to live out these stagnant emotionally charged timelines, interacting out loud with relationships that exist only in memory, etc. It is as if these timelines are like corroded arteries, but ones that actively accept the low-quality energy of drunkenness and stagnant sentimentality as better than the present timeline.

A kind of loyalty to these past timelines exists in the stagnant person: He is married to them, and wants the metabolism that feeds these low quality fires.  The heightened energy that people feel when they fall in love, or when the Muse captivates them, has so much greater intensity than usual because energy is flowing into a new and alive timeline and not being reabsorbed into old ones.  For the average person, it is the interpersonal relationship that is the main thing that can magnetize energy into the present.  Even so, the relationship will quickly become the new point of adhesion, and old arteries will attach themselves so that the new relationship will begin to “carry the baggage” of past relationships and merge with the old timelines.

The creative person, able to give himself completely to the Muse, is the one best able to personify freed-up energy capable of intense focus in the moment.  Another example of a person with powerful freed-up energy is a saint, someone like the Dali Lama, who is able to be intensely present when they encounter a soul.  This intensity is allowed by their not being sentimentally attached to just a few close relationships. Therefore, when they encounter a new person, this freed-up energy is able to sharply focus on that particular person while they are the subject of attention, and the person they encounter is  likely to be deeply affected by this moment of presence.  Of course, the average person will then form an adhesion to that moment of time, but will not internalize the lesson: He too can move toward such intensity of presence  himself by freeing energy from adhesions to make it be available in the present.

It would be a mistake here to overstate the case, because  past timelines serve a purpose for the soul, and the soul has its reasons that reason and principles of energetic efficiency know nothing of.  For particular souls, at particular life phases, for example the very old who are doing a kind of life recapitulation while in the body, this may be where they need to go.  Also, key relationships remain important to the soul even when the other has departed the body or is no longer available.  These relationships continue as timelines, and in some cases these relationships may  even develop, evolve and deepen without the physical presence of the other.  Sometimes people can do creative things with the diversion of energy to past timelines.  Perhaps the  most famous example is Marcel Proust’s masterwork, Remembrance of Things Past .

The conscious individual has to discern for himself whether the timelines he maintains in the unconscious are worth the investment of his psychic energy.

© 2006 Dawoud and Jonathan Zap

(from Dawoud:)

Peace;

I read the blog you posted on your website. While there is a great deal in it that is beyond dispute (for which you have earned my respect), I must admonish you for your shortsightedness and limited vision in the matter of the religion of Islam. Frankly, I expect better of someone who is skilled in dream interpretation, and has had a glimpse of the Other Side.

Before I begin, I must make clear that what I am writing is from an Islamic perspective – but not the Islamic perspective you are accustomed to. I append this caveat because I am the embodiment of a great many human imperfections; yet I represent a large percentage of Muslims / Sufis that get no voice outside our community – and whose existence almost all non-Muslims are completely unaware. But it would be to your profit to attempt to see things from an alternative perspective – which I remember is precisely what you wanted (further evidence of your deserving of my respect). I pray I am able to live up to the task; and that you forgive me some occasionally harsh comments.

Your strong pro-Jewish stance is not lost on me. Is it possible to be pro-Islamic, and not against the Jewish people? Yes. You may be surprised to hear this. A friend of mine, a Jewish radio producer, told me that when he was in Israel, he hung out with some Palestinians. They told him “We hate the Israeli government, but we love the Jewish people”. In other words, the Palestinians he spoke to could separate the crimes against humanity that Israel commits regularly from the true essence of the Jewish people. I find, if I am to accept the evidence of my senses, the same conclusion. I know or know of Jews who are deeply religious / spiritual, generous, creative, courageous, and to whom many great contributions to the whole of humanity may be rightfully attributed. They are more Muslim than many Muslims!

I also know some Jews who are not fit to be called human. In fact, for this precise reason they are not fit to be called Jews; except in matters of descriptive convenience. I do not accept Zionism as being in any way a part of Judaism. It is secular and denies the essence of Judaism; while pretending to do the exact opposite. I do not recognize Israel as a legitimate nation. BTW; I read your blog. I find the evidence to support Israel unacceptable – and the opinions of those who disagree are to me irrelevant.

The following statement may confuse you: there is not at this time a single Islamic government anywhere on earth. Neither I nor a great number of Muslims accept the House of Saud, HAMAS, the Taliban, etc. as Islamic governments. The Saudis are part of a deviant sect called the Wahhabi. They were founded in the 17th century by Muhammad abdal Wahhab, a man whom many denounce as a deviant from authentic Islam. His successor (whose name escapes my memory at the moment) was the leader of a band of rebels. He was caught, tried, and sentenced to death. Some learned Sheikhs then questioned him about his beliefs; and found that he was not a true Believer after all; and was an apostate. He was executed without being allowed to make a prayer.

In other words, an early leader of Wahhbbism – the sect that dominates Arabia today – was found to be an infidel. Interesting, huh?

A equally deviant, yet opposing sect of Islam, the Salafiyyah (which claims that any progress in Islam is a deviation from the authentic Salafiyyah: who were those closest to the Prophet.Yet, their beliefs and methods bear little resemblance to those of the Prophet and the authentic Salafiyyah), are vying for dominance of Islam. In the prisons, they are especially troublesome (I know this because I am an Imam in the prisons myself). Osama bin Laden, and his Al-Qaeda network are all aficionados of the Salafi cult.

Both are not only vying for dominance but are being played against each other.

Lets address a currently controversial subject: the Prophet Muhammad’s alleged pedophilia.

Doubtless you are unaware of his biography (beyond the self-serving drivel anti-Islamic propagandists peddle as truth). His first (and most beloved) wife was Khadija. She was 15 years his senior. How can accusations of pedophilia explain this?

Lets look at the facts. First of all, everyone who is remotely informed knows Aisha (the one who was betrothed to Muhammad) was 12 when they married. That’s about the same time as some American girls and boys lose their virginity (I lost my virginity when I was 13). He married her. You must admit that this is more noble than what an actual pedophile would do. And he waited until she began menstruating before consummating the marriage; which means that biologically, she was a woman. Besides, in those times, people has a lower life expectancy rate. If one usually died at 35 or 40 (due to the lack of medicine and technological advances) marrying at about 12 is expected. Romeo and Juliet were about 14 when they drank that potion. And consider this: the father of Aisha, Abu Bakr Siddiq, was actually the one to give his daughter to Muhammed. He begged Muhammed to take her…he was a Prophet. Who wouldn’t want their daughter married to a messenger of God? Not to mention that Semitic and other ancient cultures used marriage to strengthen ties of tribes and families. It still happens today.

I was truly amused by your quote from the “Koran” (probably N. J. Dawood’s translation; published by Penguin Classics – which is useful only as an excellent addition to a fireplace or paper recycling plant) “Men are the masters of women because Allah made one to excel the other, and as to those whom you fear desertion or disobedience leave them alone in the bed and beat them.”

You misquoted the worst existing English translation. Pitiful. You should know better than that.

This is what the verse REALLY says”
4: 34-35. “Men are the “qawwaamuuna” (overseers / protectors: from the word “Wali” which means trusted protector who watches over and advises) of women, because Allah has given men more strength than the other, and because men are required to spend their wealth for the maintenance of women. Therefore, honorable women are devoutly obedient and guard their husband’s property and their own honor. As to those for whom you fear (rebellion, corrupt or immoral behavior, possible infidelity), first admonish them and refuse to share your bed., Then if necessary, ” alayhinna sabiila” (usually translated as “beat them: but implies a different type of beating, as in beating someone down with an argument or harsh statement – and not a physical beating). Then, if they amend their conduct, take no further action against them, and make no excuses to punish them.”

Quite different from what your version implied, isn’t it?

Furthermore, the Qur’an mandates that ANYONE who accuses ANYONE of such crimes, is required to produce four reliable eyewitnesses. If one of them is untrustworthy (i.e. a liar or slanderer), then he is to receive the same punishment that the accused would have received. This is in place to protect a woman’s honor.

What puzzles me is why the people who commit crimes of abuse against their women have the audacity to call themselves Muslims. The Qur’an and the uswatun hassanatun (beautiful example) of the Prophet (sas) makes it clear that women are not to be treated like this, but honored.

The denizens of the North African / Arab communities who believe that the oppression of women is part and parcel of Islam are clearly in a state of kuf (disbelief / infidelity / disconnectedness from God / incapable of decency). True Islam means nothing to them; it is only a thin decoration crudely pasted over their own lust for political power – a power they neither understand nor merit.

I also believe that the leaders of these communities in their indigenous and adapted lands are economically enslaved to the kuffar (one who practices / accepts / embodies kuf)Â banking elite in one way or another – by choice and consent. Examine the history of the last 250 years, and you will not find a single example of an oppressive “Muslim” nation or community that was itself not economic slaves to the international banking elite. The intolerable and subhuman attitude the have towards their own women is a clear symptom of this. The prevention of economic autonomy always causes a backlash of oppression towards a weaker group.

It is an act of nihilistic suicide: differing from suicide bombing only by the speed in which the senseless destruction takes place. It is little wonder that many of these communities are in a state of arrested development! How can they learn anything when their “first teachers” are not permitted to know anything or to evolve as is the right Allah granted them?

They should not be permitted to enjoy the same rights that Muslims are entitled to; until they change. It is a sad state of affairs that this is permitted to continue. I recall a Hadith where the Prophet (sas) said that the day would come when the Light of Islam would dim in the east and shine in the west. It’s evident that we here in the west are destined to inherit Islam; the east is losing it. The only way these blasphemers of Islamic rules regarding women could find my statements offensive is if they recognized themselves in what I said. Their “honor” is not damaged – because they have none to begin with.

You quoted 9:5 (When the sacred forbidden months for fighting are past, fight and kill the disbelievers wherever you find them, take them captive, beleaguer them, and lie in wait and ambush them using every stratagem of war.). You (or www.teawithterrorists.com ) very conveniently omitted the beginning of the chapter; which addresses Muhammad directly. Taken in the whole context, it is a direct instruction to the Prophet for a specific historical event: i.e. a truce in the war between the Muslims of Medina (the city where Muhammad and his followers were exiled following 10 years of persecution for which they took no acts of revenge – something no slanderer of Islam ever adequately explained); which afterwards, the war – which the Quaraesh Arabs and NOT the Muslims started – would resume. Furthermore, there is no implication in this verse to substantiate anyone’s insistence – Muslim or non-Muslim – that this is a “standing order”.

It may interest you to know that in my work as an Imam in the prisons, I bring in literature for the inmates. Not a single piece that I bring in is published in Saudi Arabia.

I’d write a comment about the article in the Saturday Guardian Review; but I’m laughing too hard to write. The writer is an idiot – his citing of N.J. Dawoood’s “celebrated” translation confirmed this. His kind quoting Hadith does not impress me or anyone else who knows Islam.

Jonathan, I could debunk every single one of the misquotes I found in the article, and website you linked to with ease, were it not to make undue demands upon my time and your patience.

Furthermore, I could easily offers an identical critique of your Torah and Talmund. I don’t; because it resolves nothing. But I am laughing at your whole image of Islam.

And I’m not apologizing for what some so-called Muslims have done. I and many others admonish them quite severely. Did you know that there are over three dozen fatwas issued by several Islamic authorities against Osama bin Laden, al Zaqawri, al-Qaeda, terrorism, and suicide bombing? And you will, if you are observant, notice that every single Western city that suffered a severe terrorist attack hosts an Islamic community that issued such fatwas. Yes; including New York City. You never heard of these fatwas because your only sources are biased against Islam; and they will never give us a fair voice in their publications. Never.

Do you remember when you read bin Laden’s fatwa announcing “Jihad” (a concept he doesn’t understand and doesn’t want to understand anymore than you do) against the West? I can’t imagine how you couldn’t. Anyway, he is, if you were to humor me and accept my interpretation of Qur’an and Hadith, guilty of the exact same misinterpretation of Islamic Scripture as any dyed-in-the-wool Zionist – except that it superficially supports his political agenda. What further escapes your notice is the clear facts that:
1. Jihad does not mean Holy War (holy war translated into Arabic is “Qataala al-Qudus: a contradiction in terms in classical Arabic – and not the “Arabonics” some people speak)
2. The declaration of offensive war by a body of Muslims must, according to Shari’ah (Islamic Law) follow strict guidelines – none of which bin Laden followed at any time of his life.
3. Terrorism does not in any way conform to the Shari’ah on the conduct of warfare.
4. Bin Laden does NOT, nor has he ever, had the authority to issue fatwas. Do you have the authority to edit and append additions to the Talmund?

Furthermore, suicide bombing is strictly forbidden in Islam – despite what ANYONE, Muslim or non-Muslim, says about martyrdom. Suicide bombers are not going to heaven. Most of the young boys that do this sort of thing are misinformed. They can’t go to school, since the Zionists put curfews and build walls around their cities. They think their families will be rewarded for their suicide deeds, but this is a lie. ANY suicide bomber or their leaders would, in a real Islamic court of law, be guilty without question. The only question that would need to be addressed would be if they were actual Muslims; and should be allowed to make a prayer before the death sentence is executed (like in the case of the early Wahabbi criminal).

Allow me to append my own views to the recent controversies about the cartoon depicting the Prophet Muhammad (sas). As a Muslim who refuses to resort to violence, I think an alternative opinion is in order.

The cartoon is blasphemous, no argument. Those who made and published it are guilty of blasphemy and an unforgivable insensitivity to Muslims. But, in the Qur’an, Allah said to us “Leave the kaffriun (plural of kuffar) to Me”. To be honest, I’m not worried about these things. Of course, I oppose the blasphemies of the kaffriun. But I’m not worried. I’ve heard worse things said about the Prophet (sas) than that cartoon; and I responded; but not with hysteria or violence. Allah said in His Qur’an, to respond with logic and gentle arguments.

Some cry “Freedom of Speech!”. But isn’t freedom a means to an end? What about the responsibilities that go with it? And I’ll tell you this: those who point their fingers at Muslims who speak out against this are blissfully ignorant of an important fact: while Muslims have made disrespectful and often uncalled for comments about some Jews, Christians, etc.: WE HAVE NEVER SLADERED YOUR PROPHETS. If you don’t understand the significance of this, you will never understand us.

As far as those Muslims who are howling and becoming violent, they only harm themselves (although I suppose an emotional catharsis of some kind is necessary). It solves nothing, and only offers a temporary victory to the Kaffriun (the only kind of victory the Kaffriun will ever enjoy). I make no apology for them; only an explanation. The nihilistic mindset that has contaminated Muslims for decades has damaged our spirit and prevented us from realizing our human potential. The world had changed into a soulless, global dictatorship that has sapped the strength and spirit out of everyone. It enslaves in a manner that hides the chains that bind us. Islam, for which I speak, was meant to be joyful, beautiful, heroic, romantic, and a means of enlightening and nearness to the Supreme Being. It has been contaminated; as has all life. We watch heroism on TV; but are not allowed to participate in it ourselves: and this slavery, this cage with invisible bars is called “World Peace”.

And those in power, who are trying to engulf the world in this “peace’ while consolidating all wealth and power to themselves, must feed parasitically off the rest of humanity. Those who find their backs against the wall react in what way they are able – even to their own destruction and the destruction of that which they believe they’re fighting for. This is because most have little or no understanding of the nature of the world.

The state of Kuf carries within it a self-destruct mechanism. They are destroying themselves – an at the same time spitting on the only people who can guide them out of their suicidal actions! History is full of people who slandered the Prophet (sas) and tried to destroy Islam. The passage of time proved them to be irrelevant; and Islam rose triumphant. Allah is best to know. Perhaps some of the Kuffar will change. In a week, or ten years. It can happen. It does happen. I refer my fellow Muslims to Surat-ul Asr.

In other words, hysteria will solve nothing; and will only exacerbate the problem. Worse; it will strengthen the means by which we are kept in a state of ignorance and slavery – a state few people are even aware of.

The military and the governments are not in power. They have no real power in and of themselves. Furthermore, the US, Britain, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Afghanistan, Russia, China, Japan, France, Germany, Israel, Palestine, etc. etc ARE NOT NATIONS. They are postal divisions whose governments and military exist to administer local policies for the REAL nations of the earth. Who are they? They include but are not limited to the IMF, the WTO, The World Bank, the Bilderberger Group, the Club of Rome, the Paris Club, the Trilateral Commission, and the Federal Reserve. All governments and armies are absolutely powerless against them. It is important to understand this.

Furthermore, one must understand that their attitude toward us is not one of hate. In their view, we are not important enough to be hated. We are an expendable resource. Do you hate the chicken that you ate for dinner the other night?

Many of the controversies in the world are really symptom of greater problems. Many Muslims can’t see what’s really happening in the world and become worked up into a frenzy over near-meaningless controversies: while the Kaffriun become more and more powerful. I remember hearing a Bosnian Imam tell of how the women and children would be raped and murdered in the streets; while the men were in the mosques arguing about what the Shari’ah says about the proper length of their beards!

But what few really see is how Islam relates to the aforementioned “nations”, and the International Banking Elite. Their power is based upon a disingenuous form of usury. They create an ever increasing enslavement through debt for money that doesn’t exist. Paper money being a prime example: it has no intrinsic value in itself, and is worthless – not even backed by gold or silver anymore, but represents a debt. How can a people – ANY people – be expected to realize their human potential and be free of the kind of psychological and spiritual illnesses that plague us today if they are not economically free?

The SWIFT network is a private banking internet system that trades over 1.5 trillion dollars a day – but less than .0001% of this represents goods and services that exist in the real world. The rest is fiction; abstract, intangible. A lie! Ecological systems can become polluted. Human bodies can become polluted and carry disease. Machines accumulate dirt and require cleaning. Why do we not see that monetary systems also become polluted?

Islam is the only spiritual and political force that exists with the means to dismantle their power base – and at the same time set up an alternative economy that is holistic and useful to all humanity. No economic system based on usury can tolerate this. This is the REAL reason why Islam is “The Enemy”; but few people understand this. The Kaffriun (or at least their leaders) don’t really care what we believe or if we make five daily prayers or grow beards. Only that we are an economically and psychologically domesticated, docile and spiritless parody of Islam.

In the light of these facts, we see that racism and other ills of society are not only symptoms of a greater problem, but concentration on them to the exclusion of the real causes diverts our attention from the true nature of the problems facing us.

The Matrix has us. I took the red pill a long time ago. What pill do you chose?

From what I gather, you are in serious danger; despite your sincere intentions. You are very close to saying, in effect, “since I have no direct experience of “good” Muslims, and I have not permitted the development of the ability to extrapolate the possibility of their existence, they do not and cannot exist”. What follows is that since you would believe the “good” Muslim to be a fictitious creature that cannot exist within your carefully constructed reality, those Muslims who do exist are a clear and present danger; and it is irresponsible to continue to allow them to exist. The logic of your position demands it.

Adolph Hitler once said “The greatest strength of the totalitarian state is that it forces those who fear it to imitate it”. You are ripe to fulfill his prognostication. If you cannot overcome your “blind spot” you will degenerate into the very thing you hate.

I say this to everyone (myself included): if you want to find your true enemy, you have no need for maps of Afghanistan or Israel or the location of your neighborhood mosque, synagogue, deli, or halal cab stand. All you need is a mirror.

Do yourself a favor: stay away from websites that peddle hate propaganda (and that’s exactly what it is – an you should be ashamed of yourself for not seeing it), and don’t watch FOX or ABC or NBC or CBS or CNN. Insha Allah, you may develop an unbiased viewpoint.

Ma’a Salaam

Please don’t be offended by my blunt statements; no disrespect is intended. I eagerly anticipate specific questions from you and pray this email finds you well.

response from Jonathan:

Thank you, thank you,  I’m not the least bit offended, I’m gratified because this is exactly what I asked and hoped you would do, which is to be the severest possible critic of the point of view expressed in my essay.  I am a lifelong believer and practitioner of the Socratic dialogue and honor your ability not to take personal offense at what I wrote but to come back with the strongest possible arguments.  I will immediately post your dissenting point of view on my site at the end of the essay and advertise its presence on the main page of my site.   I’ll leave out your name unless you give me permission to use it.

An answer to your point of view seems to have emerged from the dreamtime.  Last night, during the same general time period that your email was written, or at least sent, I had a dream that seems a response to it.  I was standing just inside a Cathedral (which looked like Saint Patrick’s in New York, which I recently revisited) and was saying aloud or thinking aloud (no particular audience was apparent) that religionists needed to account for what was happening in the whole field of their religion, however deviant or twisted certain aspects were from what they consider to be the “true” religion.  I emphasized that religions had a “field” existence and everything associated with them was part of that field.  I pointed out that more religionists need to do what Jung was willing to do.  Jung, who was the son of a Protestant minister, and continued to consider himself a Christian, had the courage to ask himself an essential question that few Christians have had the courage to ask: Why has more blood been spilled in the name of Christianity than anything else? In his book, Aion , he came up with core answers.  He found that there were essential flaws in the Christian mythos that originated not in Christ, but in how the mythos was constructed by the earliest church fathers.  I feel there are core flaws in the mythos of all the Abrahamic religions that are in need of deep reform.

I also feel that there are certain people who embody the spirit of a faith, sometimes even if they do not identify themselves with that faith.  It is as if there are hidden undercurrents, a living and evolving spirit that originally gave rise to the religion, but which may retreat from the palaces of scar tissue, the pathologized patriarchial power structures that get built up in the name of the original spirit.  When this happens, the original spirit may then be carried by a few marginalized persons who feel an inner compulsion to create new forms and new mythos.  Where we encountered each other—-Alex Grey’s CoSM, happened to be the best place I know of on the planet to illustrate this.   The creative force that inspired Alex was religious (in the etymological sense of the word that means “ re-linking”) and in some of his images Alex recognizes the gnosis of all the great spiritual traditions.  For example in his 1984 painting, “Praying,” a spiritually illuminated man is surrounded by an aura which includes concentric divine words and symbols from Hinduism, Chrisitanity, Judiasm, Islam, Taoism and Tibetan Buddhism.  But no particular tradition was necessary for Alex’s inspiration. Actually, I feel that his unsurpassed inspiration needed, in this phase of human evolution, to work through someone who was not exclusively identified with a particular religious tradition.  Recently I had a trialouge with Ron Lampi and John Major Jenkins on where mythos is evolving that develops this point of view.

But those, like yourself, who continue to identify with a particular tradition have a difficult task.  I immediately told you about my essay and asked you to attempt to debunk it because I could see that you were a person who was imbued with the inner living spirit of some mystical branch and you identified yourself as Sufi/Muslim.  I knew I had met somebody from the world on which (as I admitted in my essay) I am most prone to project the shadow, and who was capable of not responding mechanically and stereotypically with xenophobic tribal identification, but was capable of accessing the inner living core of this spiritual path.  Strongly supportive of this intuitive evaluation is your statement that you are the “…embodiment of a great many human imperfections;”  That you have the honesty and self awareness to make such a statement is, for me, an enormous qualification, and tells me I am dealing with an authentically spiritual person, not a possessed self righteous hypocrite, which is what you so often encounter as those who aggressively claim to be personifying a spiritual tradition.

The difficult task I am asking of you, as someone who embodies the living spirit of a faith, is that you not just disown all the pathology that occurs in the phenomenal and energic field of  your religion, but that you take on what Jung did, and come to terms with the core of the problem—why is so much darkness happening in the name of Islam?  Whatever happened with Mohammed and his wives doesn’t concern me so much as what is happening to women right now in the name of Islam which is so wide spread and horrifying.  Pedophillic abuse of females is widespread in many Islamic nations. People from the left and apologists for Islam would like to attribute a reactive causality—-sinister Western forces, world banks and so forth, (which are real and are major causal factors) as the source of pathology, but I sense that as largely rationalization as it neglects to find inner causes that, for example, cause the worst and most wide spread abuse of women to happen in the name of Islam.

In response to many of the particularities of your counter arguments, in most cases I am not the person with enough competence in Koran translation issues and intricacies of Middle Eastern politics and history to evaluate all of it, but will certainly include all of it for the reader to make their own evaluations.  Some of what you present suggests that your competence is also very partial.  For example, you state that some of the suicide bombers are ignorant because Israeli walls and curfews keep them from going to school.  But I read in an anti-Israeli publication that Palestinians are, on average, better educated with more years of schooling than other Arab groups.  You imply that many are brought up to hate Israelis and love Jews,  but I have seen much evidence that many Palestinian children are taught that all Jews (not just Israelis) are descended from apes and pigs.  No Israeli curfews or walls prevent education from happening in Saudi Arabia, and those people have more money than God, why are they the source of an ignorant form of Islam that you disown?  The 911 terrorists were largely Saudis from educated, wealthy families.  This is an example of many cases where you fall into the fallacy of explaining the pathologies occurring in the field of Islam as reaction formations to Western oppression.  If we are to allow that kind of rationalization, then we could explain away Israeli brutality by pointing out that they are five million surrounded by three hundred million largely hostile Islamists, or that they act out because of the holocaust and millennia of oppression by other groups including Muslims.  That way of explanation takes us nowhere.

It has also become politically correct to state, as you imply, that the majority of Muslims are peaceful and that it is an extreme fringe that Western media exaggerate and that misrepresents the majority.  But I have heard from a number of sources that scientific polling of Islamic populations indicates that a large majority of Muslims support violent Jihad against the West.   You also say that you find the evidence to support the existence of the state of Israel to be “unacceptable.”  But I need to see counter evidence to support that.  For many, facts are unacceptable because they interfere with irrational convictions.  There has certainly been much bullshit from both sides about the origins of the state of Israel, and recently there have been revisionist histories, apparently written by Israeli academics that debunk many Israeli myths about the origin, and I need to read those.  Many Jews can be swayed by well-researched specific evidence, and that may account for why there is such a substantial peace movement in Israel that is opposed to irrational Zionist policies, but we need more than sweeping dismissals that omit specific evidence.

You challenge English versions of the Koran and then say “This is what the verse REALLY says,”    Well every religious person claims to know what the sacred text REALLY says, and they so often contradict each other.  How can I, entirely ignorant of the source languages of an ancient text, be sure that your alternative translation is what it REALLY says?  When you translate into English from an ancient text can you ever claim with 100% veracity that you know what it REALLY says?  When it comes to the Hebrew Bible I don’t make any excuses for it, I openly and unapologetically reject a great deal of what it says, so does Reform Judiasm, which I consider the mainstream of Judiasm.  Maybe your version is more correct than what I quoted, but maybe denial of the shadow which exists in your tradition, and all traditions, interferes with your objective scholarship, your statement that you know what it “REALLY” says suggests that, your admirable acknowledgement of your personal imperfections should probably be extended to acknowledge human imperfections as a native English speaking person understanding an ancient text written in archaic language.   Is there nothing in the Koran and Hadiths that you find objectionable?  My guess is that the Koran, like the Bible, is a mass of contradictions, that some verses will be inspired and speak to the most noble human intentions, and others will be oppressive patriarchal bullshit that needs to be openly repudiated.  You also say that the cartoonists are “guilty of blasphemy.”   Maybe that statement would be true if they were Muslims, since they weren’t, they are at most guilty of poor judgment in their expression of freedom of expression.  People who start killing and rioting because of cartoons are guilty of insane fundamentalism, one of the greatest sources of evil in human history.  If you want to kill because of a cartoon you are taking your religion much too seriously.  No group has been the victim of more degrading cartoons and other representations than the Jews, but you don’t see similar violent protests about that.  Instead of the apologetic, politically correct hand-wringing because a couple of people in the imperialist Zionist aggressor nation of Denmark might have expressed something offensive to Islam, sane Muslims like yourself should be criticizing those who use cartoons as an excuse for violence and hatred. You quote Allah as saying “Leave the Kaffriun to me.”  To me that sounds like the ominous saying of a mafia godfather, “I’ll take care of them.”  To my ear that sounds like another version of the male patriarchal godhead like we find in the Hebrew Bible which I reject. You don’t have anything to say about all the ubiquitous Muslim promotions of the notorious counterfeit The Protocols of Zion. I also find it troubling that even so moderate a Muslim as yourself finds the sins of Danish cartoonists to be “unforgivable.”  If they are permanently unforgiven I can only imagine what Israelis must be.  How can there be peace in the Middle East if even cartoonists cannot be forgiven?

You also state, “Islam is the only spiritual and political force that exists with the means to dismantle their power base – and at the same time set up an alternative economy that is holistic and useful to all humanity.”  Huh?   In what reality is that supposed to happen, wouldn’t you have to convert or eliminate all the infidels first?  Would people who continue to identify themselves as Christians, Jews or secular willingly participate in that?   Sounds like a deluded fundamentalist utopian thought form which would only exacerbate violence and religious war. If you believe in such statements, I have to return your question and ask what color pills are you taking?

You tell me to avoid websites and major news networks.   Who should I trust for news?   Whom do you trust as your news source about what is happening in parts of the world where you do not presently live? And how do you know that those sources are free of propaganda?  You add, “Insha Allah, you may develop an unbiased viewpoint.”  I’m not sure exactly what that means, apparently a blessing that I “develop an unbiased viewpoint.”   How would I do that?   I state in the first part of my essay why I believe everyone’s viewpoint is biased, I seek to become aware of my biases and to compensate for them.  Have you arrived at an “unbiased viewpoint?”

I emphatically share your closing statement,  “Please don’t be offended by my blunt statements; no disrespect is intended. I eagerly anticipate specific questions from you and pray this email finds you well.”    I greatly value the aggressive Socratic Dialogue and anyone with enough character to engage in it, we need the confrontational nonviolent exchange of differing viewpoints, that is the sort of Jihad this plane of existence needs,  and that’s why I will gladly publish on my site, and advertise, your opposing points of view and any further words or cartoons you wish to add.

I also agree with you that the place to locate the enemy is in the mirror.  That is my challenge to you, so far you still seem to be looking through the glass darkly, but I want you to look into the mirror at the whole field of Islam to find the inner enemy of the living spirit of it which you personify.

Peace,

I’m deeply grateful and honored that you have published my letter. And thank you for the foresight

of protecting my anonymity. I don’t mind having my name on there: if I didn’t want it read, I wouldn’t

have written it – and I am responsible for what I write.
I will, as time goes on, send some other writings of mine to you: you may do with them what you see fit.
May Allah bless and protect you.

Ma’a Salaam, your brother in Abrahamic Faith;
Dawoud

(some formating messed up in what follows, we’re working on it)

Dawoud,

Jonathan Responds:

Thank you for allowing me to use your name, I am extremely grateful for the opportunity to pursue this

dialogue into whatever unexpected directions it may go.  The strange result of this gratitude will be,

however, for me to continue my discourse in an even more aggressive and confrontational style.  This

has frequently gotten me into trouble with people because they take it personally or experience it as an

attack.  What’s really going on is that if I accept someone as an equal in Socratic dialogue then my

approach is aggressive and confrontational—-what’s happening is that I am now addressing them

directly without the laborious chore of social niceties and instead I speak to them as I speak to myself

in my own mind where I want to cut through illusions and get to the core of something, and I tend to

do this by attacking some proposition to find out what’s left, what’s the core of truth that stands up to

attack.  In the Jewish tradition it is considered quite acceptable to doubt and aggressively question

God and his motives and methods, etc.  As one Rabbi put it, “God can take it.”  This is my instinctive

approach, “The truth can take it.”  Terence McKenna pointed out something similar, when you

approach the truth you shouldn’t have to avert your eyes and kneel before it keeping your distance as

though it were some fragile edifice that might crumble if you sneezed at an inopportune moment. I was

brought up in a skeptical/scientific/analytical/New York/ Jewish/intellectual setting where blunt

confrontational Socratic dialogue was the norm—–though to many from other cultures it seems

abrasive and insulting, but that is not the intent.

Also, the object of contemplation most likely to bring out that idol over-turning confrontational

skeptic in me is a religious structure or thought form that makes all sorts of lofty claims, claims of

supremacy over those not initiated into its mysteries, etc and especially if at same time such claims are

made, practitioners who identify themselves as part of this religion are out killing and maiming in its

name.  Such an object of contemplation will focus my mind into a harsh penetrating light, it will not suit

me to respectfully avert my eyes and proceed on the assumption that the scholars and practitioners of

this religion know more than me and I should humbly seek their illumination.

Having disclaimed this, I would like to respond to the article you sent me on sacred Islamic

sexuality.  Here’s the link ( http://www.gaia-web.org/gaia-wicca/philosophy/sexuality/islam.html )

for those who would like to read what you sent first.         My reaction is that this document reeks of a wounded defensive narcissistic attitude and

unwillingness to confront what is really happening in the Muslim world.  Yes, in all the great religions

we can find hidden treasures, and the defensive religionist can always take out the coat of many colors

and tell us about their super heros from the past and their great shining moments—the golden oldies,

but I want them to step out of the cloud of incense and nostalgic self congratulation in the  inner court

yard and look out the window at what is happening out on the street and confront how their religion is combusting with the buzzing, bustling madness of mass human actuality.  Religions should be held to this standard because they mostly purport themselves to be spiritual paths that are like thousand lane highways, like the millions showing up to make pilgrimage to Mecca (but sometimes get crushed in stampedes)— they

present themselves and proselytize themselves as structures that can accommodate great masses of

people and provide a way for them to find some sort of spiritual paradise.  But at the same time they

don’t won’t to be held in any way accountable for actual results, where darkness erupts, that is the

fault of the individual wretched sinner, or the deviant sect, these are not the true ones!  The religious

structure can never be doubted or blamed, the fault lies always with the wretched humanity making

use of it.  Personally I am what some would call an elitist (while I think of myself as someone who

respects the hierarchies of nature), so I don’t expect great things from the mass of humanity, and I

don’t regard any spiritual path as able to reliably ramp up the lowest common denominator factors into a transcendent experience for all but the few.  I believe it is the quality of the seeker that makes more

difference than the path that is sought.  Also I come from (though may no longer be exactly within) the

Jewish path which respects other spiritual paths as equally valid ways to know the divine and which

does not encourage proselytizing which is so characteristic of Christianity and Islam.

So what I want you to confront and pierce with empathic vision as an insider is the gigantic, gigantic sexual pathology that is dominating the lives of great numbers of Muslims alive today.  The linked document is a bit of confectionary escapism because it totally omits this subject.  Fine, hidden away some where Islam had its share of tantric sex as spiritual alchemy which most religions have a version of,  possibly excepting Christianity.  The West is not projecting the shadow on Islam because it fears its sexual vitality.  The writer would like to imagine that the shadow projection comes from uptight repressed Christians

fearing Islam’s superior eros.  Every twisted system wants to pretend that people hate them out of

envy, like Bush saying, “They hate us because we are free.”  Maybe some people hated hippies because

of their apparent sexual freedom, but this is not what people are reacting to in Islam, what they are

reacting to is the gigantic oppression, torture and murder of women.  I won’t give you the

documentation here, go to womensassistance.com, go to rawa.org (RAWA—Revolutionary Afghan

Women’s Association—-courageous Afghani woman rebelling from Islamic Fundamentalism), and read

Jan Goodwin’s The Price of Honor—Muslim Women lift the Veil of Secrecy in the Islamic World .  Yeah,

sure, in theory, all religions have gospels describing how their followers can be leading these divinely

enlightened lives, but meanwhile here’s what’s actually going on….   As Gurdjieff said about another

religion, “The problem with Christians is that they are supposed to love their enemies but most of

them don’t even know how to love their friends.” Eastern religions, with more credibility, have all sorts

of theories and rituals and techniques for sacred sexuality, but such things tend to work much better in

theory, in exceptional cases, and especially in inflated lore with little evidence.  When these practices

combine with human actuality results are typically much messier.  All sorts of exalted Eastern sages

came to this country ready to initiate Westerners into their transcendent sexual practices but usually

these quickly degenerated into guru as Jabba the Hut with young caucasian hotties on  leashes—- a

kinky pathologized sex cult with a deceptive patina of Eastern mysticism.

Most of what is spilling out onto the streets with Islam right now is virulent sexual pathology, the

sexuality of fascism where sex is entirely metaphor/vessel for sadistic will to power and entirely

unerotic.  That is why pedophilia is so rampant in Muslim countries.  If you want to accomplish

something spiritual help shed light on these gigantic horrors, and then in your odd moments you can

wax nostalgic about what the super stars of Islam supposedly did in the past and so forth.  I’m more

interested in what it is doing now, and most of what I see is pathology, not transcendence.  Sure there

is sexual pathology everywhere, but the Islamic world is a huge hot spot right now.  In the Middle Ages

I would be ranting about the Christians burning five million women as witches.  Some religions, at some

times, are the fertile ground for blood harvests, and others aren’t.  You rarely hear about Taoists

burning women and killing people over cartoons.   What accounts for these differences?  I want to

pierce to the heart of the darkness, have my own theories, but I want to see your attention turned to

this unpleasant object of contemplation because it is a moral imperative to do something about it.

So that is my rant for today, the complete lack of diplomacy is a mark of my respect for you as a

genuine seeker, since you are, I feel you can take it.

To find out more about my view of sexuality/eros see the category with that name in the writing section

of my website.

Peace,

I read your “Abrasive” response” with a smile: not one of sarcasm or smugness; but one of gleeful anticipation of an enjoyable, profitable, and probably endless argument!
When my time permits, expect an email with the response your well constructed and thought out arguments merit.

Your brother in the Search for Truth:
Dawoud

Brief response from Sean Moffitt of womensassitance.com

I also had a chance to read the blog from Kamal S. The touching sex manual as spoken by the prophet is a compilation of recorded sayings from either the Hadiths or the Koran. The account fails to mention that Aisha was only six years old when she was married to Mohammed, and although that particular child marriage appears to be a happy one,  most modern child marriages don’t start with the little girl saying to her husband “you are a perfect Muslim in every way.”

response from Jonathan:

Dawoud,

I would like to get your thoughts on two documents on the following website http://www.howardbloom.net/ Islam’s War against the West  and 1.300 Year Timeline of Militant Islam.  I take what Howard Bloom says with many grains of salt, but these two articles seem well documented and document Islam, from the days of the prophet, as a religion of war with violent Jihad against the infidel right at its core.  Global, undocumented dismals, that this POV is beneath contempt, etc. will only support this thesis of militant Islam which needs to be contradicted by historic facts and evidence.

note to readers: Join the dialogue!  Leave your comments in the guest book bellow.

The next entry was written by Sean Moffitt of the Womens Assistance Fund and is entitled Jihad Against the Feminine http://www.zaporacle.com/textpattern/article/89/jihad-against-the-feminine and is a real eye-opener.

Dawoud responds:
Many of the points in that article that require refutation or clarification, I’d already addressed. The first that comes to mind are those “quotes” from the translation of Qur’an. The operative word in this sentence is “translation” - to be specific; N. J. Dawood’s pathetic attempt at translating the Qur’an into English, which I recognize in the article. Be forewarned!! Those English speaking people who would twist the Qur’an into something that serves their own vicious intentions (disguised with a facade of self righteousness) will almost invariably use N. J. Dawood’s blasphemous translation – which, like pork, I will not allow into my home.

I specifically remember addressing the mistranslation about men having a degree of “advantage” (N. J. Dawood’s rendering) over women. This is NOT what the Qur’an says. Defend Dawood’s translation all you like: it proves nothing, because you have no understanding of Qur’anic Arabic, nor of the subtleties of the language.

You want to know what makes me laugh? People who see “Muslim” and “Arab” as being the same thing. They are not. They never were. They never will be. Islam is not specific to, or defined by, any culture, nation, or race. This is especially true when dealing with cultural anomalies – like the oppression of women – that are antithetical to true Islam.

Re-read the last two words of the previous sentence, and meditate on what philosophical and mystical concept you think I might be trying to communicate; free of any preconceived ideas you already hold.

Frankly, I tire of endlessly repeating myself – and I learned to chose my arguments carefully. Most of my efforts in not only defining the true essence of Islam, but describing its practical application, I share with those who need it most: those misguided Muslims who never had acceptable education or leadership: or who are not really Muslims at all, but lunatics or idiots wearing a poor disguise of “Islam” who have nothing resembling Islam in their hearts (and who succeeds in making suckers out of non-Muslims who don’t know any better). I also share what I know with those non-Muslims who have open minds and can see beyond the surface – and most importantly, beyond the criminal actions of some who call themselves Muslims.

Isn’t it ridiculous that out of 1.3 billion Muslims, the non-Muslim media allows only those few thousand who propagate extremist opinions to speak for us and define our religion? The rest of us have to sit quietly and take it. If we speak out about it, our opinions are twisted out of context, and we are branded “terrorists: or at least “fundamentalists”.

The non-Muslims who refuse to entertain a view and input into philosophical discourse that threatens to shatter their carefully constructed opinions will not abandon this. Arguing or dialoguing with them is a waste of time.

I know that you will not be offended by this; because the only way you could be offended is if you recognize yourself in what I said. But I tell you again, stay away from those hatemonger websites I warned you about. You are in serious danger. They are contaminating you. You will become the very thing you hate; and think yourself to be the exact opposite. Your considerable spiritual gifts will be lost. This is the chink in your armor, the weak link in your chain that Shaitan will exploit. I have experience in spiritual diagnostics: take my warning seriously, and in the spirit of unconditional brotherly love in which I offer it.

(BTW, “Shaitan”, the Arabic name for Satan, comes from a root word describing the dividing and divisive ego)

I’ll make time soon to write more about this. Please forgive me; but I have things that require my immediate attention; and I want to give your questions the attention to detail they deserve. I pray all is well with you.
Ma’a Salaam,
Dawoud
Response from Jonathan:
One form of rhetorical defense if you have a weak postion is to turn your opponent into a “straw man” a kind of insubstantial carricature of thier position and then you can defeat the straw man instead of dealing with substantive arguments.  You would like to focus your attention and laugh at people who see Arab and Muslim as the same thing, but that is neither me, nor Sean.  You say the media is exaggerating a few thousand extremists but that is a defensive illusion.  Scientific polling shows that a majority of Muslims in various conutries support jihad against the West.  What I have asked you to do is to join us in probing into why so many self-identified Muslims are acting out violent hatred against women, Jews, the West, non-Muslims, etc. You have excellent credentials and knowledge to contribute to that inquiry, but you are going to have to detach from defensive emotional reactions to confront the reality of what is going on now (in the name at least) of Islam.
Responses from Sean:

I’m a little confused…I didn’t use Dawoods translations from the Quran…Are there two Dawoods here? What attempt at translation is pathetic? Is he referring to Jihad against the feminine? This person speaking in the below email seem vehement about his point of view but I wonder if he is really talking to the right people. Shouldn’t he be speaking to the violent abusive populations of the Islamic world rather than trying to tell us they aren’t Islamic? Shouldn’t he be telling them they aren’t islamic? I’m not assuming Arabic is synonymous with Islam. There were more people killed in Africa over the cartoon riots than anywhere else…writings about zero point energy are not going to penetrate the “poison” of women having their eyes gouged out in the name of Islam nor is it going to change the Sharia laws as they are currently written. I’m sorry, but he’s completely missing the point. Whatever else “true” Islam may be it certainly isn’t taking much of a stand against the burning of women.
Sean

Also from Sean:

Hey Jonathan
I’m afraid Dawood probably didn’t actually read the article or the references cited because I don’t know of the other Dawood he is refering to. The translations I used, cited in the document under the quotes from the Quran are from respected Islamic scholar Abdulla Yusuf Ali and M.H Shakir. My site has nothing  to do  with hate mongering and everything to do with getting information out to the public, most of whom, including Muslims, are completely ignorant of the burnings. From the 1.3 billion Muslims, a large fraction of whom I’m aware are not Arab, there is a deafening silence about these burnings. I’m also aware the Quranic Arabic is so full of subtle nuances that virgins can  also mean white grapes and beating can also mean touching with a feather but Mr Dawood is living in a dreamworld if he thinks that Islam has nothing to do with the abuse of women in these countries. But again, he should be talking to the people burning the women. Fundamentalism is pathetic regardless of which faith, not some specific translation of it.
… I’ll be working on a short document about Sharia laws here very soon, because the subtle Arabic used to interpret the actual laws seems to encourage and enable the abuse of women. Anyone that disagrees needs to take a closer look. According to Shanhaz at the Islamabad shelter only 4% of honor killings are prosecuted because the women are immoral.
Sean

Dawoud sent the following (before he had a chance to read responses from me and Sean):

Peace;

The following is an excerpt from the account of the Prophet Muhammad’s Night Journey (wherein he had an “out of body experience” and went from Arabia to Jerusalem, then ascended to the Seven Heavens), and a commentary by Muhayyideen ibn Arabi (one of Islam’s greatest Saints). This is his experience at the Fifth Heaven.

THE FIFTH PARADISE: THE GARDEN OF BEAUTY AND FELICITY
Muhammad (pbuh) travelled for five hundred thousand light-years, after which he arrived at the fifth paradise which is called Jannat al Naeem: “the Garden of Beauty and Felicity.” Its door is made of mixed gold and silver from heaven. Jibraeel knocked at the door and a voice said: “Who is it?” “Jibraeel, bringing Muhammad (pbuh).” “Has he been sent for?” “Yes.” “Welcome, Beloved one, to the fifth paradise!” The door opened and Muhammad (pbuh) saw five beautiful ladies whose radiant light among their servants made them appear like diamonds surrounded by pearls. His heart was moved towards them. He asked Jibraeel: “Who are these ladies?” He answered: “This is Hawwa (Eve), the mother of human beings, this is the Virgin Maryam (Mary), the mother of Isa (Jesus), this is Musa’s (Moses’) mother Yukabid, and this is Assia, the wife of Pharaoh.” The fifth lady looked like a sun among stars. Her light shone over the rest of the inhabitants of that paradise like a gentle breeze passing through the tree-leaves. Jibraeel said: “This is an angel representing your daughter Fatima”

Muhammad (pbuh) asked: “Jibraeel, what is the secret of this paradise?” Jibraeel said: “Allah created this paradise to reflect the beauty and perfection of women. The light of this paradise is the source of the angelic lights of all women on earth. Women have been created to carry the secret of creation in themselves. Allah has honoured them greatly by making their wombs the repository of His word which represents the Spirit. He looks at the most sacred place and there descends His mercy and blessings. He perfected that place and covered it with three protective layers to shelter it from any damage. The first is a layer of light, the second a layer of love, and the third a layer of beauty. There he fashions and creates human beings after His likeness, as Muhammad (pbuh) said: ‘Allah created Adam after His likeness.’ He orders the angels of the womb to perfect His creation by giving the baby life, beauty, health, intelligence, and all kinds of perfect attributes that will make each one distinguished among human beings.”

“Women are not created weaker but more generous than men. They are created more beautiful and less fierce, as beauty hates to hurt and harm others. That is why they seem weak to people, but in reality they are not. Angels are the strongest of created beings, and women are closer to the angelic nature than men, as they are readier than men to carry angelic light. It is the good manners and ethics of spirituality which they carry which makes them less forceful than men. Even physically, however, they are extremely strong. They undergo great upheavals in their body without flinching for the sake of childbirth, and face the direst physical conditions more successfully than men because Allah has enabled them to insure the survival of generations.”

“Allah gave women five angelic qualities which men rarely have. They are the source of peace, as Allah said that He created them “so that you might find rest in them” (30:21). This is the attribute of the first paradise which is named “the Abode of Peace.” They are oasis of constancy in the midst of chaos and change. That is why they give birth as the mother nurtures and shelters the baby more reliably than the father. This is the attribute of the second paradise, which is named ‘the Abode of Constancy.’ They perpetuate generations. Through their offspring Allah creates angelic prophets and saints who establish His perpetual remembrance on earth as the angels establish it in heaven. This is the attribute of the third paradise which is named ‘the Abode of Eternity.’ They are generous and bountiful. They are described as ‘a fertile land’ in all Scriptures because they give without counting, including life. They sacrifice themselves for the sake of another creation, and this is the attribute of the fourth paradise which is named ‘the Sheltering Garden.’ Finally, they are the source of Beauty. Through their softness and subtlety, Allah has crowned the earth with the diadem of angelic grace. This is the attribute of the fifth paradise which is named “the Garden of Beauty.”

Jonathan, the observent person will doubtless draw a parallel between the Seven Heavens that the Prophet visited – and the Realm Beyond where he met Allah face to face (and the angels couldn’t follow), and the seven chakras, and their corrosponding places on the Tree of Life; the Realm Beyond (my phrase) corrosponds to the Ayn Soph. This is gaurded by the Lotus Tree. Gotama Buddha sat under the Lotus Tree and was enlightened. Muhammad went beyond it.

I hope this is helpful.

Ma’a Salaam,
Dawoud

BTW: this article came from the English language website of the Naqshabandi Sufis.

Ma’a Salaam,
Dawoud
===========================

Zero Point Energy
By Sheikh. Ali Diallo

The Zero Point Energy is the lowest possible energy of a system. Spiritually speaking, it is indeed the door of Barhul Qudra. It is the lowest possible energy level Man has in his body when he is in a state of natural rest (coma, death, or extreme physical exhaustion). This state is witnessed through the behavior of the cells of the body at that moment. Since the zero point energy is the lowest possible energy of a system, it must be lower than the natural rest energy of the human body.

It is important to understand that the reality of the Zero Point Energy involves Water and Fire that are mixed in a unusual way, spiritually speaking (scientists see this as quantum fluctuations occurring in the zero point energy field).

At that level, the 0 (off) state gives birth to the 1 (on) energy state and the 1 (on) state gives birth to the 0 (off) state.

This process happens at the speed of the Prophetic Heart, which is beyond the highest of the 3 types of speeds: physical (velocity of Light C),  spiritual (speed of thoughts, imagination and of the Spirit) and Divine (speed of the Heart, which is known to us as “Presence”).

It is the Reality of “Abd Allah” because it is linked to the nature of the Nur of Allah {SWT} which appears everywhere simultaneously and which connects every creation through Barhul Hayat.

Water, a spiritual symbol of the Zero Point Energy, [Ocean of Creation Hidden Fire of Hydrogen lies dormant with in the h2o] is perfectly still. It symbolizes perfect submission, the zero point level.

Yet it carries the secret of the eternal Movement, which is the secret of the Living.
Out of the state of death and submission comes the reality of Life. Allah {SWT} put the reality of Life inside the reality of Death.

He {SWT} put what cannot be dead inside what cannot be alive. This is from His Greatness. Similar concept applies to physical life (planets, cosmos, stars) that come out of an empty and dead vacuum (space).

The Zero Point Energy is the State of the Heart that is at the station of the Hadith
“My earth and my heavens do not contained Me, but the heart of my believing Servant does contain ME.”

Man always has some level of natural tension in his body, even when he is in a natural resting state. It is because of this tension, which is always above the zero point energy level, that Man is maintained in his “humanity” and in dunya. This natural tension is the Nun , the Glue force that binds the soul to the physicality of the body and of dunya.

The key is to get rid of this natural tension, that is, to go below the level of natural tension in order to reach the level of Zero Point Energy. At that level, Man enters the reality of Submission (Islam) through all the cells of his body and at that moment, all the cells of his body are repenting and making Istighfar. The key to unlock the tremendous energy field that is contained in the zero point energy level is “Astaghfirullah/Repentance”.
Istighfar /Repentance is the Igniting of the Fire, Sins and Bad Action are the Fuel the ending result is Light. Because of that entrance of repentance, the appointed Sultan {QS} will make a Dua and through his Dua, the Sultan {QS} will release the Energy fields that are contained in the hadiths “My earth and my heavens do not contained Me, but the Heart of my believing Servant does contain ME”. This Energy is Nur, which has no limit and is infinite in power. This is why scientists believe that the zero point energy has an infinite level of energy associated with it.

To reach that state of zero point energy, Man must be in a state of extreme physical fatigue or extreme repentance or in a state of natural death. The physical body must indeed be completely wasted and exhausted in order to go below the natural state of tension that it knows. The physical exhaustion may represents the physical actions that come from devotional practices. In this sense, an extremely important number of devotional practices and worship may also lead to the state of zero point energy.

When the cells of the body reach that state of death either through natural death or through extreme physical fatigue (or coma), each one of them will recite “Forgive me”, and they will all be in a quantum state of permanent and quick fluctuation. At that level, the cells are boiling (in repentance) and through the perfect stillness of the zero point energy, they will be in perfect motion. Out of the state of death associated with the zero point energy will come out the state of Hayat, real Life through quantum fluctuation. This is the reality of the Ayat:
“Thou bringest the Living out of the dead, and Thou bringest the dead out of the Living;” (Surah 3, Verse 27).

When the energy associated with the zero point energy is released, it will burn every manifestation of dunya in the body. At that time, the secret of Fire will be unlock and the secret reality of the Cursed One will appear to release the fire of “hell” which will consume the body. The body will be a subtle void, with no traces of food left inside. The more food and enzymes present in the body, the more intense the Fire will be, which is the goal.
That fire is coming from the Ocean of Hayat through the blessings of the 7.
So the cells will be 0 and they will look up to ask forgiveness to the 7.
In that state of boiling soup of repentance, the cells will melt and be completely liquefied until there is only the 7 floating above an Ocean of Water.

This is the reality of the Ayat: “His Kingdom was over water at the Beginning”.
In that aspect, the zero energy level is the State of the Origin, of the Beginning.

This secret is linked to the Reality of Seydina Musa {as} and of Fire. Seydina Musa {as} is Kalimullah/Speaks to Allah, which means Allah {Swt)’s Ancient Words. His is swimming in the Ocean of the Divine Beginning and of the Divine History, which is the fire of the zero level state.

That state was also granted to Seydina Umar {RA}, who also has a fiery nature like Seydina Musa {as}. This is why the Cursed One could not face his Fire.

According to this ayat:
Tooliju al layla fee al nahaari wa tooliju al nahaara fee al layli
Wa tukhriju al hayya mina al mayiti wa tukhriu al mayita mina al hayyi
Wa tarzuqu man tasha’u bighayri hisabin.
“You bring the Living from the Dead
and You bring the Dead from the Living
And You give sustenance to whom You like without without measure.” 3:27

To move from the state of HAYY to the state of Mayiti and vice-verca, the creation needs the Meem of “mina”. So the Prophet {SAW} is the link and the door through whom the changing of states appears. More about this and the changing of states that took places in the cave of Sirr as Sirr later inch’Allah.

Allah {SWT} granted the secret of Hayat (Life) to Water which represents death or the zero point energy because of its perfect stillness and He {SWT} granted the secret of Death (destruction) to Fire which represents life because it is sustained through the Ocean of Hayat.

So He {SWT} brought the Living (Life) out of the dead (water) and He {SWT} the Dead (power of destruction) out of the Living (Nar or Fire).

As Allah {SWT} say in this Ayat: “You give the Kingdom (authority of life or death) to Whom You want. The statement “To Whom you want” is an indication that the Authority was granted to a controversial reality, such as the one of the Fire (which comes from Hayat). Angels did not understand this.

Through Prophet {SAW}, the Authority was granted, to a Servant to be born from fire in order to protect the innocence of Mankind, because it is not suitable for the Most Honorable Creature to be cursed. So one took the Curse of Mankind out of Love for Prophet {SAW}.
It is impossible to escape the Love for the Prophet {SAW}.

Iblis knew about Prophet {SAW} because he was constantly in prayer in the Past. He prayed in every place of the universe and prayer is ascension. So he was raised constantly, until he reached a station where he learned about the Beauty of Prophet { }. Because in fact, you cannot be raised in miraj and worship Allah {SWT} without coming to a point where you understand who is Allah {SWT}. For “La ilaha ill Allah” leads you to “Muhammadan Rasul Allah”.

Praising and witnessing this Reality was his goal, so he was told what he needed to do to witness this Reality. This is the spiritual path of all Sufis, those who burn everything for the sake of the One. So he was told the price to pay: “in order to reach Me, in order to witness this Reality, you have to go back to creation, to look after my human beings, and to carry their burdens and to be cursed by them.

This is the Price.” So he did what Love commands you to do. In this aspect, all real Sufi Saints are walking in the footsteps of Iblis and are taking his example as their references. Seydina Aba Yazid {QS} understood that reality, this is why he asked in that state “O Allah! make my body as wide as Hell so that none of your servants may be thrown in it”. He {QS} was learning from the Example of Iblis. And he {QS} was also thrown back to creation in a garbage place (manifestation of the reality of Hell and of Iblis, the Servant responsible for the reality of Garbage).

So externally, Iblis is jealous of the honor granted to Mankind and of the Prophet {SAW}. But internally, he is in love with Prophet {SAW} and manifest this Love by burning everything (that is, every divine or spiritual law) down. Hallaj {QS} learned from this reality of Iblis, this is why he {QS} acted as he {QS} did.

This strange reality of Iblis is explained in the incident of the Cave when he tried to enter that Reality. When he was outside of it, he was the Cursed One and he produced evil by eating the flesh of the foot of Seydina Abu Bakr as-Siddiq {RA}, that is, by eating away Sincerity from the heart of the believer. But as soon as he was granted permission to enter the Cave (the White Station of Sirr as-Sirr), he showed his real nature and revealed his Love for Prophet {SAW}. He also explained why he was granted life and was maintained alive (the secret of Love which keeps alive and youthful).

So at the Qalb and Sirr Station, Iblis can penetrate. It means that he is known in these station as Iblis the Cursed One. At the Sirr as Sirr Station, his reality changes and appears without veiled. This is why it is said that he cannot penetrate the Sirr as Sirr Station. In fact, it means that the negativity associated with his cursed reality cannot enter this station. But the real face of his reality is present in the Sirr as Sirr station, otherwise there would be no fire of Love in that station.

This is the station of Sincerity, so it means that in this station, the sincerity of the worship of Iblis can be revealed.

So the Siddiq Station is the place of Salvation of Iblis. Also, the Fire (iblis) must be present with the Water (Seydina Abu Bakr as-Siddiq, QS) in that Station of opposite and fluctuating zero energy states. So in that station, Fire became Water and Water became Fire. And the Secret of one was given to the secret of the other, to the limit that the Prophet {SAW} set. That is why the changing of states appears through the Meem of “mina” in the Ayat:
Tooliju al layla fee al nahaari wa tooliju al nahaara fee al layli
Wa tukhriju al hayya mina al mayiti wa tukhriu al mayita mina al hayyi
Wa tarzuqu man tasha’u bighayri hisabin.

It is through that event that Water was granted the permission to carry the Fire (Nur) of Life and that Fire was granted the permission to carry the death and submission of Water.
Therefore, for the very first time, Water became the Fountain of Life and Fire became the Source of Destruction through the secret of the Sirr as-Sirr station.

Were it not for this Station, water would not be carrying the power of Life (which it borrowed from the reality of fire) and fire would not be carrying the power of death (which it borrowed from the reality of water). This is why this station is the Crossroad, the Naqsh. It is a tremendously Ancient station and this is why Seydina Musa {as}, Allah {SWT}’s Ancient Word, was so attracted to it.
—-
Tooliju al layla fee al nahaari wa tooliju al nahaara fee al layli
Wa tukhriju al hayya mina al mayiti wa tukhriu al mayita mina al hayyi
Wa tarzuqu man tasha’u bighayri hisabin.
This is why we recite these Ayat is Salatul Nejad/ Salvation]

This Ayat has the power to extinguish the Light of Iblis completely. However, Allah {SWT} put the Secret of his Life in the very same Ayat, so that the Sword that kills him is also the Mother that gives him life. His death and his life are intertwined together to the extent that killing him brings him back to life.

This is why it is said at the beginning of the message that at the zero energy level, water (life) and fire (death) are mixed together in a unusual way. This is from the Greatness of Allah {SWT}. It is through the last term hayyi that Iblis is brought back to life, and cannot die. Every time he is killed or harmed spiritually by a wali, he is reborn from the Ocean of this Hayyi. He is then maintained again in life through the remaining Verse which reveals his Granted Sustenance.

This nature of Fire and Water mixed together in Iblis are shown in the story of GrandShaykh Abd Allah {QS} Who asked him: “Do you want to repent?” Iblis said yes and when he was told what to do to repent, he became a greater rebel.

When GrandShaykh {QS} asked him: “do you want to repent?”, at one level, He {QS} meant: “do you want to have the fire of your nature extinguished?” That is, do you want Fana? As soon as he said “yes”, GrandShaykh {QS} killed him and finished him spiritually. At that moment of submission, when he was shown what to do, his fire was reborn instantly.
Since the time of the Crossroad (33:72 We did indeed offer the Trust to the Heavens and the Earth and the Mountains; but they refused to undertake it, being afraid thereof: but man undertook it;- He was indeed unjust and foolishthe time of Al Amanat, Verse 72, Surah 33), when Iblis accepted to carry the burden and to be put on the cross at the place of the Honored Man and by wearing his image so that it would look as if the curse of creation (Angels and scholars, which are represented by the people cursing the image of Iblis appearing on the cross as Jesus Christ) is falling on mankind, since this time, the miraj of Iblis has been in the opposite direction. The more he rebels, the higher he is raised, the same way the more dunya the fire burns, the more purified Man becomes.

From this perspective, when GrandShaykh {QS} asked him: “Do you want to repent?”, He {QS} meant at that level “do you want to be raised higher by carrying even more burdens, by carrying a bigger cross?”. Iblis said yes because as a perfect abd, he only knows ascension.

So GrandShaykh {QS} showed him the way, i.e., give him the opportunity to rebel even more (that is, to be raised even higher). Iblis seized this chance and rebelled a second time for the same reason he did the first time. So he walked away with a higher station.

Good and bad behavior are only at the level of creation. At the level of the Divine, every opportunity is a way to be raised higher, regarding the outcome of the situation. So GrandShaykh {QS} raised him higher by allowing more curses to fall on him.

Peace;

In what remains of the Gospels, Jesus was quoted as saying “Seek first the Kingdom of God and all His righteousness, and all else will be added”.

One of the problems people have (and I have it too: boy, do I have it!!) is that they put the cart before the horse. They will argue politics and the superficial elements of religion – which is, after the BS is stripped away, proven to be nothing more than an elaborate ego driven pissing contest. Most human beings have what Robert Anton Wilson called “Glorified Primate Behavior”. Instead of pissing to mark territories, the make elaborate markings with ink on paper. Instead of throwing excrement at each other, they throw bullets and bombs.

I have little interest in being a primate. That’s why I’m trying to discipline myself to emphasize the spiritual element. That firmly established, all else will fall into place. Everything that baffles most people will be known instinctively. We will be able to see beyond the surface; and more important, beyond our own biochemical / egomaniacal emotional violence and the limits of our linguistic constructs.

May Allah guide and protect us all.

Ma’a Salaam,
Dawoud

Response from Jonathan:

That a huge part of the morphic field of a religion is its immersion into the long skull shadows of history, oppression of women, death and suffering, are not superficial elements, they are core elements that need to be confronted. I have little interest in submitting to  religions which are characterized by territorial primates making elaborate markings with ink on paper for which they claim divine status.  Accessing the spiritual does not require one of these bizarre systems that has millenia of scar tissue built up around it. Going to Islam, or any religion, to get in touch with the spiritual can be like going to Walmart to get in touch with nature—-yeah somewhere there might be strawberries in a plastic box for sale, but there is a hell of a lot of other stuff there that won’t further my purpose.

Response from Sean 3/20/06

The Saudi printing presses crank out one hundred million Qurans per year, so if that’s being  taught in the Madrassas thats what Islam is. I think your friend Dawoud isn’t very well informed if he claims there isn’t one single Islamic government in the world today. One important part of having a problem is denying that you have it, and Dawoud is doing a wonderful job with that. It also annoys me how he says he could refute all of the “miss  quotes” in your writings with ease. Which, of course he has yet to do. In my opionion his interpretations are being smashed by day to day reality.

Response from Dawoud 3/20/2006

Your friends are in manifest error. Not about the crimes, mind you! But about what motivates the crimes. I’ve been over this with you before and see no reason to repeat myself.

I visited your friend’s website; and found nothing but hate mongering hysteria. The fevered pitch in their “voices” screamed out from the pixilated light upon which their words were branded. Hate mongering: nothing more. Their “facts” would be ridiculous were they not so venomous and vitriolic. I have nothing to say to your friends. They’re not worth talking to.

Islam forbids the oppression and abuse of women. Whoever does so acts outside the paradigms of Islam. What ”Muslim” oppressors say to justify their crimes is irrelevant – they are not Believers. Tell your friend to show me the verses in the Qur’an where Allah begins by saying ” Ya ayuhull Muslimeen ” They’ll never find it in a million years; and they cannot understand why its not there, nor the significance of its absence.

Perhaps your friends should find a way to use Qur’an and Hadith to prove the sinful nature of the “Muslim” criminals. That would be more effective: and I have experience in using this to stave off the criminality your friends rant about. Everything they need to do this is right in front of them and they don’t see it (unless they’re using N. J. Dawood’s abomination as reference material). They don’t want to: their hate is too intoxicating and flatters their egos and vanity too effectively.

I have publicly, in front of Muslim audiences of many nationalities, denounced the Taliban, al-Qaeda, etc. as being Kaffriuun (Infidels) or Zindiq (heretics). Why do you suppose no Muslim argued with me? But no!  If I said that to a Muslim, then the Muslim would, according to your friend’s logic, denounce me as an infidel, Zionist sympathizer, and apostate. It could never happen!

Go ahead and say it: I’m either insane or a liar.

Your glorified primate friends are identical to people they claim to hate – I see nothing that makes them any different from any terrorist sympathizer. The logic of their positions demand that they begin immediate acts of genocide against all Muslims. Starting with me, because I pose an intellectual threat to their dogma of hate – physical acts are of limited danger, but I plant seeds within hearts and minds that will be carried from generation to generation. I am more dangerous to them than any bomb wielding Arab: I threaten their whole world view and foundation of what they must develop into a power infrastructure that opposes Islam in any way, shape or form. This includes Sufism, because they must inevitably interpret Sufism as a “wolf in sheep’s clothing”. I have the ability to infiltrate many levels of Western society, and be accepted by them. Then, I will contaminate them and their children with Islam! The damage will be done and it will be too late! Civilization will be in ruins! You must tell them where to find me so they can stop me! Failure to do so would be terribly irresponsible of them! Action must be taken immediately ! There’s no time to lose!!

Sound ridiculous, doesn’t it? May Allah protect us all from being ridiculous.

Jonathan, I wish you could see your website and writings from my eyes, if only for a moment. You enjoy pointing your finger at Islam too much. Its clouding your judgement to the point where any real facts that present a different perspective will soon become incomprehensible to you. If you truly enjoy the spiritual station you claim for yourself, you wouldn’t need me to refute the arguments on those websites. The reality would come to you without any assistance from me. You cannot do this because you are becoming intoxicated by the need to be “right” and make other “wrong”, and the need for an enemy to justify your position. Its as obvious to me as the sun in a cloudless sky at noon.

Do you remember our first conversation? I do. You said that you, in effect, couldn’t see anything but your own passionate view about Islam. You said that Islam was a”blind spot” for you Those were your words , Jonathan.

You are in terrible danger. I fear for your spiritual well being. I’m truly worried.

Ma’a Salaam,
Dawoud

Response from Jonathan:

Yes, Dawoud, I said something like that, I also told you that I have a prejudice toward

fundamentalists of all sorts—- Christian, Jewish and Islamic, and I wanted you to have a

chance to point out errors in my view of things Islamic that might be faulty due to my

projections. The problem is that your way of persuasion is undermining that and costing

you credibility, at least in my eyes. I am very swayed by documented facts, but that is not, for

the most part what you are providing, and you seem to be very much in the grip of projection

in your last email. I feel worried for you when you call the WAF website hysterical and hate-

mongering and do so in an hysterical tone! I’ve read that entire website and all I can tell

you is that as an English teacher and a writer I found the tone to be sober and factual with

almost every statement carefully documented by reputable sources. This is in dramatic

contrast to your tone and your undocumented assertions. I agree with Sean that you repeatedly

state how easily you could debunk his assertions and quotations. which begs the question: why don’t

you? That’s what would sway me, but actually I have a better reality test challenge for you.

I don’t have any competence in sorting between claims and counter claims about

alternate translations of ancient texts. I do, however, claim competence and have credentials

(a BA and MA in English, 14 years teaching English) in decoding English text, and I have read

the WAF website in its entirety a while ago. You have made a claim that it is hysterical and

hate-mongering. Please establish your credibiltiy by giving me some quotes from that

website to support that statement, maybe I missed something due to some prejudice. If so, open

my eyes to a tone of hysteria (which you described as “fever pitched”) and evidence of

hate-mongering on this site.

What seems especially absurd is your following up this criticism of hysteria and hate mongering with

naming calling: ” Your glorified primate friends…” Now if this isn’t pot calling the kettle black type circular projection I don’t know what is. Then you say “The logic of their positions demand that they begin

immediate acts of genocide against all Muslims.” Huh? First of all you have a fictious “they.” From the

hysteria of your tone I feel like I should look out my window and see a horde of primate friends dancing around

a fire burning Islamic effigies and shouting slogans. There is no they, I  know one person, Sean, who is working on this and

he works with and for Islamic women. Next you go off into some really hysterical  messianic gandiosity:

“Starting with me, because I pose an intellectual threat to their dogma of hate – physical acts are of limited danger,

but I plant seeds within hearts and minds that will be carried from generation to generation. I am more dangerous to

them than any bomb wielding Arab: I threaten their whole world view and foundation of what they must develop

into a power infrastructure that opposes Islam in any way, shape or form.”

There is no dogma of hate, and as far as posing an intellectual threat, that’s what I have been trying to

get you to do, the problem is that it is less and less intellectual and more and more irrational and hyperbolic. I wanted

Socratic dialouge, I want an intellectual threat to what I believe, that’s how I learn. If you want to threaten our world

view, please do so, both Sean and I are anti-fundamentalist, we have no religious agenda to want to crusade against

Islam or something like that. Threaten our world view with contrary documented evidence and well thought out

reasoning. Right now I am doubting your ability to emotionally disengage enough to have the sober reality testing

for a Socratic dialouge, I need you to support your statements about the WAF website because that is a modern English

document and one of us must be very wrong in our ability to interpret text. How can I trust you on ancient document

interpretation if you are so far off in what is the native language for both of us?  Then you cause me to doubt

your reality testing even more with this statement, “If you truly enjoy the spiritual station you claim for yourself…” When did I ever

claim a “spiritual station” for myself? You’re the guy that is supposed to be a Sufi Imam or something, where is this

statement coming from? Far from feeling my world view being threatened ,I’m starting to feel more like a fatigue

factor creeping into dialouge with you and many of my friends on the left about what’s going on in the Middle East. I

keep hoping for Socratic dialouge, keep hoping to get challenged and educated by divergent points of view, but instead

seem to get mostly highly emotional projections, so I am starting to feel burned out on the subject, seems like no matter

what anyone does in relationship to the Middle East, the outcome is always to be pulled into quagmire. Maybe that’s because

the human species is a primate species, much as we glorify ourselves, and the monkey mind keeps taking over, so yes

I do have glorified primate friends, and you are one of them, and there’s about six billion of us. I can see us sitting in

a twelve step group with six billion chairs in a circle. I’ll start off the round of introductions: “Hello, my name is Jonathan and

I’m a glorified primate.” Now it’s your turn….

The trialouge takes an interesting new turn in Part IV

If you didn’t already read it, begin with Part One

1/23/06 (Ron’s reply)

Okay, we have gotten to some exciting and essential insights here. In many ways, we are on the same page at this point; to much of what you wrote this last time I could only say Yes, Yes, Yes.

You see it does take some discussion to get to the essential notion of The Mythos. Certain assumptions, knee-jerk reactions, preconceptions have to be sifted through. You made the point well: the new Mythos is not another mold-stamping meme to cage us up like those we’ve known from the past.
Side note: Your “communion wafer with imbedded integrated circuits” immediately reminded me of my poem “Silicon Wafer” written in 1988. The first line goes,

This is the new transubstantial body of sacrament, and then another stanza beginning This is the new Host of hosts. (Of course this is the orientation that is Technos, not mine.) Whenever I read this poem publicly I bring with me and hold up an actual silicon wafer. You have seen actual silicon wafers before the circuits get printed on them?
You referred to gnosticism and quoted from Gospel of Thomas. Early on in my development as New Age thinker/theologian I saw that the New Age signals a rebirth of gnosticism. The Aquarian injunction “I Know,” meaning I know firsthand, I know for myself, no more secondhand and hand-me-down doctrines, is gnostic through and through.

Now before we get all giddy and pat ourselves on the back and say So that’s it, The new Mythos is the Creative Process glorified with some hocus-pocus multidimensionality thrown in, it’s all but mythmaking, all about staying IN PROCESS where everything gets to be everything, juxtaposed, mixed-and-matched, eventually resulting in gray goo, let me put on the brakes a little and say we must still bring out of ourselves a specificity, our meaning, our Answer to the Call, a destiny (as Heidegger would say), which is yes, another World Age.
(Why do we have to go through this World Age thing? Why all these stepping stones? Why can’t humanity just GET IT? Good question to explore. Might 2012 be the moment of GETTING IT?)
You see I keep going back to the “New Age.” The dawning Age of Aquarius/Leo. Now this means something specific. I would like to explore what astrology offers here to help us understand this something specific, but probably not tonight–another time. (I will show you why Aquarius points to PSYCHE.)
You see when I myself stopped making fun of the early New Agers I met many years ago–and it is so easy to take potshots at anything labeled “New Age”–I began to realize this–an epiphany really: Is there anything beyond the decadence and nihilism of Postmodernism which is only ramping up to a frenzy of techno-materialism? And then I saw: The New Age was this vast new POTENTIAL of an emerging BIG PICTURE. Did I care what the half-baked New Age gurus and celebrities were saying at the time? All that half-baked stuff will eventually be swept aside or transformed into something more substantial. The New Age to me was this vast blank canvas before the artist’s eye. And I, the poet visionary, now get to paint on it! I, and whoever else courageous enough, will step up to the canvas and be the mythmaker of these words vibrating with potential: “New Age.”
Another note: These quotes you offer from gnostic writings. I easily substitute the name PSYCHE into the speaker’s mouth and it is no different than what Psyche is conveying to me on a daily basis.
Referring to your writing “Casting Precious into…” your quote about the androgyne is exactly my experience with Psyche. Psyche is the Divine Shapeshifter (as I prefer to run the two words together). Psyche teaches me how to be many-in-one because Psyche is the Many-in-One, the Higher Self. Yes, that does mean practicing at being a chameleon, a changeling, a mutant, as you put it. As I say in the title of a poem “I Am My Own Gender.” And apparently when I’m out and about in the world I sometimes confuse people, they do a double-take, trying to decide, Male, yes? or what?
Your reference to the metaphor of the movie theatre, the projector, the images on the screen, etc. I have presented this way:
Consider the Sun. (Many many years ago I was blinded by the Sun and it took me many many years to articulate that experience.) The Sun sends forth innumerable rays of Light. These rays are the various faces of Divinity, the various religions, the various spiritual paths, the various symbolic systems. Just about everyone is busying themselves with seeing according to the light of a particular ray. Sometimes you find individuals looking across and recognizing there are other rays of light–another religion, another path, another ism even, and they start comparing notes (comparative religion studies / comparative mythology studies, etc.) or say, Let’s be a Universalist Church and mix our rays together in some kind of light-sparkling stew. Now what I have always suggested was this: I’m not interested in the particular rays of the past, I ask, Where do all these rays come from? They come from the Sun. It’s the Sun that I want to be concerned about. THAT SUN HAS COME TO ME AS PSYCHE, ABLE TO SHOW ANY FACE YOU ARE DESTINED TO ENCOUNTER AND BE ENGAGED WITH.
Last, for tonight: I hope, Jonathan you do realize that my talk (speaking for myself) about Mythos is not mere speculation, future scenario projecting, it is not as I say in a poem mere talk –I am already speaking from the place of The Mythos. My relationship to Psyche is that Mythos, and all the language that goes forth from my mouth is born from that relationship, The Mythos, the Living Fountain of being-in-that-process. I wanted to be clear about that. (By the way, the original Greek meaning of “mythos” did have a connection to the mouth–it was a telling uttered by the mouth. Therefore not abstract speculation, but always a kind of enactment–the telling of a story.)
For tonight,
Ron
Yes, I too am very excited about where this is going, you have been guiding me to focus my intuitions about Mythos and think about it as a subject in itself, and I might never have looked at it so directly except with your promptings.  The parallel of communion wafer/ silicon wafer and especially the recognition of the androgyne/changeling as core and essential, show that psyche is speaking to both of us and generating parallel recognitions.  It’s taken me a while to stop taking my relationship to the muse or psyche for granted, and to express daily gratitude for this life-long relationship.  Sometimes I try to stop and remind myself how different life is for those not blessed with such an immediate and ongoing relationship with this source of inspiration.  Recently I have noticed how different aging is for most other people than for me at this point.  In so many others, some of them younger than me, I sense this vast disappointment, their bodies are declining, and so is their feeling of life as adventure or voyage of discovery.  I’ve had the occasional moment of feeling that, but mostly my spirit is continually buoyed up by relationship with the creative force which allows me to continue to grow and feel excited enthusiasm as new visions, ideas and creations happen on a daily basis.

With the last exchange I feel a turning point and 180 degree change of focus.  So far our dialogue has been, in a sense, in the post modern mode of analysis, processing, talking about underpinnings and so forth.  We have agreed on the outline of Mythos as vessel, and now my focus shifts to content.  The word “content” has become strangely numinous for me recently.  The numinosity of this word had a very specific beginning.  I was in a preliminary discussion with Drew, the young webmaster/digital artist who has co-created the Zap Oracle website.  Articulating a reason drawing him to the project, he said, “At least you have some actual content to put in a web site.”  Since that moment the word content has resonated in my mind as numinous and also the phrase “ lack of content” has resonated in my mind as an emblem of the zeitgeist and of younger generations.

This has happened to me before, a slang term will suddenly light up in my mind as a representative of a whole zeitgeist and generation.  In the Eighties, when I was teaching in Long Island, New York I recognized such a word as signature definer of that place and era, and the word was “ cheesy.” A phrase that resonated from sit-coms and adolescent put-downs and extended into the larger culture as a zeitgeist signature was “get a life.” A continuation of theme from that phrase is the one presently stuck in my mind as a generation-defining phrase—- “ lack of content.”

The Onion recently ran an article that was something like, “U.S. Department of Retro Runs out of Past.”   The idea was that we had already done so much retro retread of 50s, 60s, 70s and even 80s, that there was nothing left to create new retro out of.  This article also seemed to define a post modern languid lack of creative vitality that had to forever resort to the pastiche technique of retreading bits and pieces of past creations.  This is reflected in popular music where the muse doesn’t seem anywhere near as strong as it did in the Sixties and early Seventies when there were so many moments of pure inspiration coming out of Led Zepplin, Pink Floyd, Jimmy Hendrix, etc.   Now what we get are jam bands and lots of cover songs.  With movies we get stuff like the third remake of King Kong and movie versions of old TV shows or DC/Marvel Comics like Charlie’s Angels and The Fantastic Four.  There seems to be a terrible lack of  new and inspiring content.

I have a fascination with generational differences, and Neil Howe and William Strauss who write about generations have inspired me to take a closer look at generational differences.  They have written a few books together— Generations, 13^th Gen., The Fourth Turning and Millenials Rising. I wrote about an interview with them in Temporary Indeterminate Zone.  According to their model, the Boomers (am I right in thinking Ron, that you are, like me, a younger Boomer?)  are the lastest incarnation of the generation that receives a great vision, and the Millenials are the latest incarnation of what they call the G.I. generation, what Tom Brokaw called “the Greatest Generation,” the generation that fought WWII, my parent’s generation.  The Millenials are (according to this intriguing theory which resonates with both doubt and truth sense) a noble, self-sacrificing generation who the Boomers are likely to send to war (well, that’s already happened), but may never find their real destiny without the help of visionary Boomers. This has some parallels with Ken Wilbur, and his book Boomeritis , for example, because he correctly recognizes that the Boomers are also the most narcissistic generation ever ( I have long recognized myself as a narcissistic personality type) and so caught in narcissistic indulgence and pathetic efforts to hold onto the youthfulness that they thought was their brand, their permanent possession, that they fail to fulfill the visionary potential that younger generations need them to fulfill.  To pick up the theme of today’s entry, they are supposed to provide the visionary content, but after a brilliant beginning they have faltered in their role, and Wilbur’s hope is that aging and recognition of mortality may spiritually awaken them from their narcissism and bring back the visionary spirit.

The twenty-three year old woman ( a Millenial) who I wrote about in Born Under a Blood Red Moon… posted her dream on My Space, the morning after I subscribed to her blog.  When I was subscribing I noticed a feature on My Space that allowed you to do a cyber-aided kind of remote viewing of generations.  They have a browse feature that allows you to specify an age range, among other parameters, and view the corresponding blogs.  I decided to check up on the Millenials and was disheartened by what I found.   This was not what Strauss and Howe would have me believe.  Most males seemed to be suburban wannabe gangsta’ types, and despite Strauss and Howe’s claim that this was a “less sexually charged” generation My Space at least (in the words of Drew, who really is an inspired Millenial and 19) was a “giant whore-off.”   But there you get both sides, the continuing whore-off of Gen-x and the Boomers, but also a couple of Millenials—Drew recognizing and dissing that, and the dreaming psyche of the young woman who also disses that.   But the main impression I had of these Millenial blogs was, “lack of content.” Most of them hadn’t even posted a single blog and seemed only capable of reacting to other social chatter or capable of only a “ whaz up?” Under interests, there was little of individual interest, all the males were into skateboarding, snowboarding , smoking weed, meeting girls and an assortment of bands.

So this is the change of focus on Mythos—-supplying content.  That is what I feel a calling toward, even a feeling of generational responsibility. As you wrote, “…. we must still bring out of ourselves a specificity, our meaning, our Answer to the Call.” Supplying ideas feels important, but the most fulfilling life activity for me is fantasy writing, subcreation, and it is in the great fantasy works of others that I have found the greatest gifts of Mythos not generated by the strange twists and turns of my own life and relationship to psyche.

My entries tend to run over long I’ve been told, so I am going to bring this one to a close with an excerpt from Casting Precious…. that gets into subcreation.  My question for you, and for psyche/muse is about subcreating content.  Although my relationship with muse/psyche continues to be fertile, I have often felt frustrated about the long periods of time I have to wait before access to the fantasy writing portal opens.  I have written about this and relating to the muse in The Path of the Numinous .  I often have this feeling that the greatest contribution I can make is in fantasy subcreation, but my access to has so far been brief and episiodic and most of the content I have created can be found in my unfinished epic, Parallel Journeys .  What light can you throw on this urge to a better, or more prolific, content provider?

“ Subcreation” is a term introduced by Tolkien in his essay on fairy stories as his way of acknowledging that the fantasy writer is generating a creation, a subordinate reality within the larger creation of God. Tolkien’s creation of this term, and the way he employs it, reflects a certain ambivalence toward creation, and may partly explain his dark view of the One Ring. Tolkien needs to acknowledge that fantasy writing at its highest level is a profound act of creation, a birthing of a parallel reality. But as an orthodox Catholic who locates the Godhead more outside than inside, he is careful to put “sub” before it and emphasizes that the fantasy creation is a derivative subset within God’s creation. Tolkien tells us that subcreation is a natural human right and divine, but also warns about hubris and the tendency for power to corrupt and to be used wickedly,

Fantasy is a natural human activity.

Fantasy remains a human right: we make in our measure in our derivative mode, because we are made: and not only made, but made in the image and likeness of a Maker.

Are there any ‘bounds to a writer’s job’ except those imposed by his own finiteness? ….humility and an awareness of peril is required…
The right to ‘freedom’ of the sub-creator is no guarantee among fallen men that it will not be used as wickedly as is Free Will.

Probably every writer making a secondary world, a fantasy, every sub-creator, wishes in some measure to be a real maker, or hopes that he is drawing on reality; hopes that the peculiar quality of this secondary world (if not all the details) are derived from Reality, or are flowing into it.  If he indeed achieves a quality that can fairly be described by the dictionary definition: ‘inner consistency of reality,’ it is difficult to conceive how this can be, if the world does not in some way partake of reality. The peculiar quality of the ‘joy’ in successful Fantasy can thus be explained as a sudden glimpse of the underlying reality or truth.

But Tolkien also discusses another realm of reality where subcreation is more powerful and divine. He calls this realm “Faërie”,

An essential power of Faërie is thus the power of making immediately effective by the will the visions of ‘fantasy.’

In Faërie, imagination and manifestation are melded and this seems to locate the Godhead, the source of manifestation, closer to the individual, because in Faërie their imagination is like the mind of God, it has the power of instantaneous manifestation. Even more than the hallucinogen experience where the experiencer is typically the recipient of vision rather than the conscious creator of it, the auto-erotic realm may be seen as existing closer to Faërie than the ordinary realm. The person able to generate a vivid auto-erotic fantasy, which produces measurable physiological effects on the fantasizer, is asserting the essential power Tolkien attributes to Faërie—-the power of making immediately effective by the will the vision of ‘fantasy.’ To be “effective” the manifestation does not have to have weight or occupy three dimensional space. This imaginal effectiveness is a forbidden power that will typically make the gods that rule society and the collective baseline of human consciousness jealous, competitive, angry and fearfully vindictive.

January 24, 2006  A Trialouge Entry

John Major Jenkins offers some comments:

        If you're interested, I'll offer a few comments as I        

        read through your exchange.
        

                          My take on Mythos is that it is a set of beliefs          

        suggesting a way of being in the world. Even to         

        phrase it thus starts to remove it from a clearer
        

        formulation, which in my mind would be: A worthy         

        Mythos is one that encodes universal principles. With        

        the introduction of the idea of "universal" we
        

        immediately alienate a large sectors of intellectuals        

         who have been taught to deny the idea of the         

        Absolute or universal. Impermanence rules in the         

        mode    rn paradigm of relativity, even though the most         

        profound metaphysical insights of Buddhism (which         

        specializes in discourse on impermanence) reveal that        

        meditation on impermanence yields an understanding of        

        the underlying, unchanging essence
        

        upon which all manifest being is founded. The point         

        is that a Mythos works because it is an expression of        

        Perennial wisdom & truth. Ron writes that mythos:
        

                          "must speak to other people” it must be collectively         

         engaging (otherwise we     deal with private fantasy)         

        and we must be able to live inside its world, that
        

        is, live in accordance to its world."
        

        But he writes that Blake's Mythos doesn't work         

        because it is idiosyncratic. But Blake's deity names         

        are only the surface, and they denote universal         

        processes; he was greatly influenced by Swedenborg,         

        translations of Plato by Thomas Taylor,
        

        and his entire Mythos is Neoplatonic and therefore         

        referential to universal principles. The problem is         

        that a Mythos can't deliver its goods wholesale to a         

        consuming public without that public working a little        

        to expand the mind. That said, a Mythos can embed a         

        more or less unconscious populace into the correct        

        general framework, and they can then live their lives        

         in the glow of that dream. For example, no one has         

        to read Joseph Campbell's Hero With a Thousand Faces        

        to be swept away by Sly Stallone movies. Similarly,        

         the Maya ballgame was a     Creation Myth mystery play        

        that the average Mayan farmer could watch and         

        appreciate, even while the ballgame encodes a         

        profound galactic alignment that     culminates in 2012.
        

         Those are some random thoughts for now,
         

         John
         

         Ron’s Entry:
         

Briefly, before addressing this new turn in discussion you’ve taken, let me say this about my personal relationship to Psyche. (And before Psyche, I most often referred to the Muse, who is now a particular expression of Psyche.) Do you know that passage in Jung where he says something like, We don’t really develop a relationship to an abstract archetype (which is to say, engage our eros), but it is to the living God (what we experience as the living Divinity) that we respond. His statement only confirmed for me what I had been doing all along. It is this living relationship that is key to the mythmaking process.

I could have picked up an earlier thread or two, but instead I will respond to your own concern about content . We can talk about how-to kick into creative high gear another time, but now–let me propose something. This could potentially have content coming out of your ears. First, for years I thought that my major work would be my collection of poems Advent (now nearing 300 pages), but I realize there are other works to come. I realize at the same time that one or two are far more than perhaps one person alone could fulfill. I am always open to collaboration. I could share a couple examples where I’ve already done that…sometime later.

Here’s the BIG BUILDUP: This, I believe, will be the number one archetypal theme of the 21st Century: The theme I call Technos and Psyche . The God of technology facing off with Divinity of soul–the conflict between but potential integration of technology and spirituality. Now I’ve already written a prelude narrative poem to a projected epic poem by that name. What I’m throwing out is this: I readily envision this as a collaborative effort. I don’t mean working on an epic poem together necessarily, which I can still do myself, but working this theme into other forms, other genres. If Technos and Psyche is true mythos then it can and will be rendered into different forms, different genres. It could be a multi-volume work of fantasy/fiction/science fiction. Since the prelude is actually quite visual, it begs for illustration. Visual artists/computer graphics artists could come into play. It could be a series of fantasy comics. Hell, it could be an animated film. I see someday when the younger popular culture realizes this is hardcore 21st Century stuff it being rendered into a rock opera. Pink Floyd would have been the perfect group to pull it off.

This would be a long-term project. It is obvious I will be working with the theme for years to come. You with all your familiarity with contemporary culture, all that detailed informational stuff, having seen and read all that mythos culture out there, might consider yourself up to such a collaboration. I assure you, the content that you are aching for would spill out.

I would insist though that Technos and Psyche remain the Big Names of this endeavor. All manner of fictionized names/characters, events, episodes etc. would naturally be expected. I’ve already seen how the story–the Mythos–of Technos and Psyche could move in dozens of directions, opening up whole new subplots and adventures. (All this could be discussed in detail later.)

This is the basic plot that opens up the whole story (what my projected epic would entail): Technos is set on controlling the planet. (Important: Not destroying the planet, but controlling it.) When Psyche enters the picture Technos at first would destroy Psyche, but cannot. Technos then sets out to control Psyche, the Shapeshifter. Technos’s mindset is based on old paradigm oppositions. On Psyche’s part, Psyche is not set on opposing Technos, Psyche is not against Technos–what Psyche must do is to win Technos over to a working-together even as Technos does all It (it’s an It) can to oppose it. Psyche must create a sea change in Technos. The eventual outcome is their sustainable Integration on planet Earth. Now this whole story would be played out not only in two archetypal Living Powers, but in a cast of literally dozens and dozens of human characters. I already envision a new breed of humans called the Mutants (inspired by guess who) who learn the secrets of shapeshifting (and others) from Psyche in this epic 21st Century struggle.

You don’t have to give me an answer immediately either way. Perhaps six months from now you will say Aha! that was a good proposal by Ron. Timing is everything. Sooner or later, The Mythos I envision (Technos & Psyche and more) will pull in any number of collaborators.

This is what I thought to share with you tonight given your posting. Perhaps I went off course, but perhaps not.

Ron

            Jonathan’s Entry  
          

For the fantasy writer, theme is not content, I already have themes coming out of my ears and could easily spend the rest of my life writing about those themes in the various nonfiction styles and genres I already write in.  The mythos that has influenced me has far more power than the thematic, it is the specific vivid, organic embodiment and personification of theme, the subcreation of world and characters, a subcreation that takes on a life of its own so that characters act in ways that the author never anticipated—–that is what I mean, for myself, as content.  Theme is not what I want to even think about as I step through that portal, I take theme for granted because my life has always been thematic, if I begin with theme as my starting point I would be interposing a layer of abstraction between me and organic creation.

As far as the theme of Technos and psyche, we have an abundance of potential Mythos relating to that theme.  The whole cyberpunk genre is a dystopian function of that theme.  The theme of Technos and Psyche is a subset of a greater theme—-the evolutionary event horizon, the singularity archetype—–the major themes of my nonfiction writing.  Back in the Seventies, when I first discovered these emergent archetypes, I had the strong, core intuition that nonfiction writing and intellectual research was the weakest leg of a tripod—–I especially had to explore it on the imaginal plane as a fantasy epic and I had to live it out in my waking life, and it wasn’t always clear, still isn’t clear, whether or when the second or third leg might predominate over the others for a time.

Technos and Psyche is already one of the most dominant themes in Mythos.  These are two streams of evolution that have already converged and have many layers of symbiosis and antagonism.  In some versions they are deadly competitors—for example the popular Terminator movies where the machines evolve so quickly that by the second Terminator movie, the one with almost all the merit of the trilogy, the machines themselves have learned to be shape-shifters and we have the liquid metal terminator.  An alliance between courageous people and a reprogrammed terminator (a reforged symbiosis of Technos and Psyche) are necessary to defeat it.  Many people sneer at Mythos when it arrives in the form of popular culture and think that Mythos must be chiseled in stone or written in heroic couplets, but this attitude is ignorant cluelessness I don’t even want to waste time debunking. At the end of John’s thoughts he makes a similar point—-Mythos tends to appear in a popular form, and the average person lives “in the glow of that dream” while the initiated are able to see and label in their minds layers of meaning inside those glowing dreams.

Terminator II is a profound bit of Mythos, with more depth than a superficial glance reveals.  There is a life-affirming message of anti-determinism—-characters that travel in time to alter timelines and destinies.   One of the core themes is engraved by Sarah Conner in a picnic table (I think), a last message left for her son—- “No fate but what we make.” That’s as good a theme to be at the core of a great Mythos as any, and combine that with the theme that the toxic and antagonistic war with technos can be won by reprogramming technos to make the relationship symbiotic again.

I use Terminator II to illustrate that Mythos can be right in front of our faces in popular culture, but not recognized because it is hidden in plain site.  Greater works of modern Mythos have explored the theme of psyche and technos with a different theme—–two competing streams of evolution converging into antagonistic conflict which is resolved when organic evolution is shocked into metamorphosis and overtakes the technos evolution that was otherwise greatly outpacing it. The Matrix can be interpreted that way, but I think AI in the Matrix is actually an allegory and metaphor for the Archons of Gnosticism.  A more central example is the visionary classic (book and film) 2001.  AI in the form of Hal 9000 becomes malevolent as a result of a neurotic conflict created by inconsistent programming, humans with a political agenda of deception.  Hal had been programmed to deceive members of the crew not in hibernation about the real nature of the mission, and this deception conflicted with so much deeper programming about truthful accuracy in relating to humans.  But Hal’s violent nervous breakdown and homicidal attack turns out to be either irrelevant or an evolutionary catalyst.   A far more mysterious and potent Technos, the black monoliths, apparently created by god-like extra-terrestrials, turn out to be the equilibrium punctuation points that take organic evolution to the next quantum level of metamorphosis.   2001 is a work of Mythos I would rank as on a par with the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel.  But a still greater exploration of the theme of Technos and Psyche, the greatest I know of, are the Dune books by Frank Herbert.  The first book, Dune , begins in a distant future where the convergence and antagonism of Psyche and Technos has happened long in the past and reached a kind of stasis.  In the distant past of the world we first encounter is the Butlerian Jihad, a Galactic Jihad against machines made in the image of the human mind.  Humans long ago recognized that Technos was a competing stream of evolution and they curtailed that stream to favor human evolution whose cutting edge is directed by the Bene Gesserit, an esoteric and scientific sister hood who employ a millennia long program of genetic manipulation and transformative rituals involving potent and poisonous ethnogens that either kill or metamorphose an adept.  They are seeking the creation of a new human type—the Kwitsatz Haderach—–and when this new type comes into being we see the playing out of a theme that may be more central than Technos vs Psyche:  the Mutant (the most potent human embodiment of Psyche) Vs. the patriarchal power structure.  That is the more relevant struggle at this phase of human evolution, because what seems like the antagonism of Technos right now is mostly Technos in the hands of the patriarchal power structure.   W’s illegal wire taps are computer-enhanced, more Technos enabled than Nixon’s, but it is not Technos driving that so much as the same old patriarchal power grab.

So in my content, in Parallel Journeys which is the largest piece of Mythos content I have so far created, it is organic evolution and antagonisms that is dominant, not Technos.  I lean toward that sort of time line, because every magazine, every sci-fi everything is already exploring Psyche and Technos and Mythos is not so much an exploration of existing themes as a subcreation, a dreaming into being of new and emergent possibilities, it is a choice more than summation or prediction—-no Mythos but what you make.

From where I am standing a theme like Technos and Psyche is almost as empty as a medium, as empty as a piece of paper with a three word title waiting to become an epic.  The content I need is not any of the many themes I can choose from, but the living force of Psyche subcreating a new world, and the lesson I have gotten so many times is that I can’t make that happen, I have to wait for windows of opportunity, and the main steps that I can make toward windows of opportunities is to intensify and not sabotage my own metamorphosis through diet, discipline and faithfully following the muse to all the other interesting places she leads me while I wait for that portal to open.   So what can your work on “super-creativity” tell me about that process that I may have missed?

1/26/06

You must have been saying to yourself, What was Ron thinking? by making such a proposal. I know, I must have sounded incredibly naive on my part. To even suggest such an over-reaching theme as Technos & Psyche after all the science fiction novels and all the movies, the cyberpunk culture, etc., out there that have already tackled that theme in various ways is either to be naively out of touch with contemporary culture or wildly delusional in thinking I could add anything new.

Reading your reply, though, I thought, Here we were so close, reading from the same page for a bit there, and now it seems we are reading from altogether different texts. So close in one sense, but still back to square one regarding fundamentals. For example, I’m not sure you really mean the same thing by Technos as I do now, and perhaps I shouldn’t assume it since I introduced the name. My developing mythos of Technos is very Heideggerian, though far more literary, poetic, visual, as would be expected of a poet. There’s no need to dwell on all this right now, however…

But to say something about themes. Okay, okay, I get the message there too–you have themes coming out of your ears, you said. I understand. In my case though, themes generate content, though not necessarily immediately. It is what I call planting a seed (the seed idea, the theme) and cultivating it, letting it germinate in its own time. Or I call it getting pregnant. Which leads to the feminine…

Super-creativity. Without explaining everything I mean by that word, it is where creativity is no longer locked in to particular forms, styles, genres, tradition, but is free to move in various directions, even at the same time, and to mold anew whatever it fixes upon. Okay. Super-creativity is what I call discovering the Living Fountain, the Fountain of Unlimited Creativity, the Fountain of Fire & Water. It is the Fountain in which Psyche appears. I discovered the Fountain and then Psyche invited me to join Her in it. Imagine having an illuminated Fountain of Fire & Water continuously rushing up through your body to the point where you can’t make it stop.

Without going into too much how-to detail as you would get in a workshop, what else can I say right now? The importance of symbols. You see then I work seriously with symbols. I am not one who plays with symbols and thinks they’re “cool,” which the young tend to do–I take them as living psychospiritual realities. The Melody. The Vision. The Labyrinth. The Fountain. Psyche. Memory. The Edge / The Opening. So I might ask, What is your practice? Your spiritual practice, shamanic practice? Ideally, I believe, you–the artist–should discover your own.

You said, “wait for that portal to open.” The key word “open.” How to make of oneself an Opening–how to make of oneself, in one’s psyche, a woman. Whatever it takes. In my case I had to suffer while She destroyed my life–ripped me open, blinded me, made me stutter because everything turned to Fire, so I had no choice but to receive. In that place of the Opening is the Fountain.

The following are some quotes from my long poem The Cruz (referring to Santa Cruz, the Holy Cross). This is what Psyche was telling me. When I read these lines inside the poem I am blown away. And then there’s the finale–

Sacrifice your life to me & I will show you wonders.

If you will let me destroy you, I will take you higher.

And then the finale, which I literally get high on just reading:

So you found me in manifestation.
Into my Dance I led you & in my Dance
I crushed, pulverized & melted you,
separated your elements & distilled you.
Yet does Love persist? Not destroyed?
Know then, I have refined you & resurrected you,
a Selfhood unpredicted, unfathomed, plutonium potent.
You are more powerful than any warhead of the nations.

I raise you from the rubbish heap & ashes.
Stand at the threshold of a New Age
& prepare all for my world-shattering & resurrecting Vision.
For I resurrect.    I create.    I nurture.    I am the Fountain
of a Creativity as of yet unimagined.
I am The Cruz & I am The Rose.

I think that’s it for tonight. I hope another turn in the spiral of the dialogue was made. I wanted to respond to the few comments that John made but it’s too much right now. Only this: Though I followed and generally agreed with his observations, his beginning statement goes: “My take on Mythos is that it is a set of beliefs suggesting a way of being in the world.” I agree with “a way of being in the world,” which could be straight out of Heidegger, but I can no longer agree to the first part. Jonathan and I have appeared to agree that the new Mythos can no longer be a set of beliefs, no longer a mold-stamping religion, doctrine, system, meme, but has much more to do with PROCESS. Myth making making making.

For now,
Ron

Jonathan:

Mostly I think the turn in the spiral has brought it back to the starting point, our individual relationship to muse/Psyche, the fountain of creativity, and probably toward closure on the dialogue.  For myself I feel like I have had a chance to step away from the creative process, to consider Mythos from a more abstracted plane than usual, learning new things about it, and to consider, for me, the parallel issue of my own inner will to create Mythos and to discuss that with two other people, Ron and John, who are also driven by the muse.   This is why you wrote “… reading from the same page for a bit there, and now it seems we are reading from altogether different texts.” We were able to stop for a few exchanges, look a the process from the outside, and now we have to go back to our individual relationships with Psyche, and for me that seems likely to remain a mostly solitary relationship when it comes to the Mythos part of it, the subcreative part.   I’ve collaborated on some things, the creation of my website is certainly a collaboration, and I can collaborate in exchange of ideas, like many years of dialogue with John, but sometimes psyche/muse doesn’t want collaboration, it wants metamorphosis to come out of the crucible of an individual human psyche.  The thematic thread we have followed has brought me back to the center of my labyrinth, the need to subcreate, and with that need comes long standing themes of relating to psyche/ muse, an all consuming relationship as your poems eloquently express. (see The Path of the Numinous —my essay on relating to the muse, illustrated with a few of the perilous twists and turns that relationship has taken in my life.)

Psyche is always leading me somewhere interesting, often several places, but I often feel a frustration that I am only occasionally led to the fountain of Mythos subcreation,  which for me has occurred mostly in fantasy writing.  I do practices, but inconsistently, and I often feel a need for intensified practices, especially core bodily fundamentals—-high vitality diet and exercise, strengthening the bodily vitality that supports the intensity of relating to Psyche and creating on that level.  I can’t complain because I already have a Mythos that penetrates every area of my life.  But I also need  avenues of expression that allow me to bring that Mythos out into the world.  The new webstite is the closest I’ve gotten to fulfilling that need, because it contains my fantasy subcreation, Parallel Journeys, and expression of my mythos in a variety of other written and visual forms.

So I can only get away with talking about Mythos in the abstract for a little while, like I can only talk about life for so long before the inner demand is to live it, not talk about it.  I need to walk the talk, do the practices, can’t be merely a commentator on the sidelines of Mythos, got to follow Psyche into the rabbit hole and cocreate other worlds than these.. ..

A personal example of a synchronicity involves a day some years ago when I was reading Jung’s book, Synchronicity, the Acausal Connecting Principle . At the time I was living in the East Village area of Manhattan and was reading the book in the libary. In the passage I was reading, Jung recounted a series of synchronicistic events that began with dreaming about a fish.  He awoke from the dream and the first book he opened had a picture of a fish.  Then there was fish for lunch, and later he saw a dead fish on the sidewalk, etc.  I remember being greatly underwhelmed by this anectdote. A fish is such a common thing, I thought, if you were looking for it of course it would seem to be everywhere. I gathered up my stuff and exited the library walking the two blocks to my apartnemt building. I unlocked the outer door of my building and walked up the four flights of stairs to my apartment.  Someone had drawn a picture of a fish in white chalk on the door!

When Jung coined the term synchronicity it was a speculation. Since then, the findings of quantum mechanics (especially what is referred to as ” nonlocality “) demonstrate that synchronicity is a key organizing principle of the universe. If synchronicity governs the oracle consultation, then when you toss coins or choose pebbles to create a hexagram you create a pattern that refelcts that moment in time, and that moment in time includes your intentionality in approaching the I Ching and the energetic dynamics of your situation. Anybody who works with the I Ching discovers how synchronistic it. Three summers ago I had a run of nine consecutive days getting the same hexagram (number 23, Collapse) each day for my daily general life reading. According to probability theory the odds of this happening randomly are 1 in 64X64X64X64X64X64X64X64X64.

The phrase, “dream interpretation,” can be somewhat misleading.  From my point of view dreams are not puzzles awaiting solution, but life experiences.  Dream interpretation is at least as subjective and limiting as “life interpretation.”  It would probably be meaningless, for example, to attempt an interpretation of what you did last Tuesday.  But on some Tuesday there could be a dramatic episode of the sort that would later become a frequently repeated story or anecdote. These dramatic episodes could be subject to interpretations such as, “That certainly taught me never to believe that people are who they say they are.”  Similarly, most of the dreams that people bring for dream interpretation are dramatic episodes where insistent meanings are breaking through from dream time to waking time.  Interpretation is still subjective, but the dream may be tasking us to interpret it into the waking life.

No credible dream interpreter can claim to interpret every dream.  Ninety percent of dreams that are brought for interpretation, however, have prominent archetypal elements which can be interpreted.  The main validity test for dream interpretation is whether the interpretation resonates with the truth sense of the dreamer.  If your dream falls into the ten percent that I cannot satisfactorily interpret, we can use the remaining time for I Ching or Zap Oracle consultation.

Dreams and “Reality”

The heart has two phases, contraction and expansion, systole and diastole. Mammal incarnation has two phases it cycles through on a daily basis — waking and dreaming. We are interdimensional travelers, arriving from another dimension at birth, departing to other dimensions at death. The cycle of the day recapitulates the cycle of a life. At night/old age we run out of energy, grow sleepy, and eventually surrender to the temporary oblivion of sleep/death. Sleep/death is not an eternity of velvet darkness; the velvet darkness is polka-dotted with shimmering portals — incarnations/dreams.  The dreamtime is our other daily dimension, and it is ruled by a different physics than the physics of our waking dimension. The relentless and ubiquitous tyrant gravity does not bind us, and if we realize that we are able to fly and translocate at will. Linear time does not bind us, and past, present and future fold together in wavy patterns like <a href=”http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Damascus_steel”>Damascus steel</a>. In the dreamtime, synchronicity is the rule rather than the seeming exception. The Tao of the dream usually unfolds in parallel to inner psychic content. An unproven assumption is that we generate our own dreams. But the dreams of people who are dull and unimaginative in the waking life, often have the surreal double and triple entendre complexity of the dreams of the most imaginative, as if they were all directed by David Lynch. And who is the dream generator in the many documented cases of mutual dreaming?

Our culture of fundamentalist materialism has the naïve prejudice that waking is “more real” than dreaming. Waking and dreaming are just two cases of our having a perception that something seems to be going on. Physics tells us that the seemingly solid objects of our waking life are actually patterned energy, that matter (as Einstein pointed out) is actually just a special case of energy. Also, we never sense anything but internal perceptions. For example, when you look at an object with your waking eyes you see ambient light reflected off the topography of its surface.  That light passes through the simple convex lens of your cornea and appears upside down on the back of your retina. The image is then turned right side up and otherwise interpreted by neurological processing. There is obviously a time gap between the object and this artifact of its existence (reflected light) reaching your eye and then being interpreted into perception. So what I see with my waking eyes is a neurological reconstruction of a past event. Spiritual teachings, philosophy, neurology and psychology are unanimous in telling us that we are never sure of what we’re looking at, that human perception means to look through a glass darkly at a thin slice of an edge of a multidimensional multiverse.  So it is merely cultural prejudice to assume that the patterned energy we perceive in our waking life is “more real” than the patterned energy we perceive in the dreamtime.

Consider the case of a sleeping boy having a dream on a subway train. In the waking life this boy has the stereotypical bad stepfather — a sadistic, controlling personality who sees this boy’s whole existence as an irritation. Superficially, especially when others are present, he pretends to have the boy’s best interests at heart. The boy’s mother tells her son that he should love his stepfather and the boy is confused; he’s not sure what to think of him. In the boy’s dream his stepfather appears as a monster who turns into a human only when other adults are in the room. Meanwhile, back in the waking life, random strangers step on or off the subway, stations are announced, etc. Which is more “real,” what’s going on in the subway or what’s going on in the dream? If your point of view is meaningfulness or relevance to the boy, then the dream seems more “real.”

There’s a Jewish tradition that says, “An uninterpreted dream is like an unopened letter.” That overstates the case for dream interpretation. Dreams are not puzzles awaiting solution, but life experiences. Dream interpretation is at least as subjective and limiting as “life interpretation.” It would probably be meaningless, for example, to attempt an interpretation of what you did last Tuesday. But on some Tuesday there could be a dramatic episode of the sort that would later become a frequently repeated story or anecdote. These dramatic episodes could be subject to interpretations such as, “That certainly taught me never to believe that people are who they say they are.” Similarly, most of the dreams that people bring for dream interpretation are dramatic episodes where insistent meanings are breaking through from dreamtime to waking time. Interpretation is still subjective, but the dream may be tasking us to interpret it into the waking life.

Another naïve assumption about dreams is that we are alone in a world of our own imagining. Sleeping and dreaming are boundary-dissolving states, and our dreaming psyche may be impinged on by other dreaming psyches or by autonomous entities able to travel into the dreamtime dimension.

Nightmares

In classical antiquity it was believed that all dreams passed through two gates. Dreams that passed through the gate of ivory were pleasing but always false.  Dreams that passed through the gate of horn were terrifying, but always true.

Dream theories are at least as unreliable as life theories.  Sometimes, however, they may identify one of many possible functions that a dream can serve. Nightmares often seem to have a healing function that has much in common with the way homeopathic medicine works. If you have a lung infection, for example, the homeopath will give you a very dilute poison that attacks the lungs. There is a paradoxical mechanism at work here—-the poison hopefully stimulates an immunological response that will overtake both poison and infection.  Similarly, nightmares often seem to contain a homeopathic poison designed to stimulate a psychic immunological response that can ultimately create psychological/spiritual healing. For example, several times I have had people bring me almost the identical nightmare. They are hanging out a bar or a party and suddenly all the people around them turn into vampires.  When questioned about their feelings surrounding the dream, the dreamer volunteers that they have a tendency to be self-destructively promiscuous. The nightmare reconditions this toxic habit so that when they are next in such a social setting they are much more appropriately wary and feel a nauseous gut response when some random stranger tries to pick them up.