Revisiting the Tree of Knowledge
ewsnead
of knowledge a second time to fall back into a state of innocence.""Of
course," he answered, "and that is the final chapter of history of the
world."[1] - Heinrich Von Kleist
Do not think you will necessarily be aware of your own enlightenment. -
Dogen Zenji, 1200 - 1253 AD (Japanese Zen Master)
19th-Century dramatist Heinrich Von Kleist wrote of the "Second Bite" of the
fruit of knowledge. He pondered the possibility of overcoming the
fragmentation and devitalization of the individual sown by the rationalized
hyper-consciousness of modern life. Acute self-consciousness originated in
the Protestant Reformation. The weight of original sin rested solely upon
the shoulders of the individual. Luther and Calvin emphasized a subjective
and autonomous relationship to God. They questioned the institutionalized
status quo of a Church that mediated the relationship between a person and
the Transcendental.
This challenge to religious heteronomy gave birth to our modern conception
of the individual. However, it exacted a high cost in weakened social bonds.
The same authoritarianism, whatever its other faults, that overshadowed
individualism also secured the solidarity of the community and its network
of binding reciprocal relationships. The connective social tissue began to
subtly unravel.
Incipient individuality planted the seeds for the "New Science" of Rene
Descartes. Truth arose from the self-certainties based within subjective
experience. This orientation created the conditions for the modern man, one
characterized by heightened self-awareness and a proclivity for
rationalization. Modern man discovered the empowerment to use reason as he
saw fit. However, preoccupation with reason also contributed to an ebbing of
social connectivity. This truncated the capacity to experience emotion.
Affect draws its content and energy through interpersonal relationships. We
need people; the more socially isolated, the less our capacity to feel.
Faced with barriers to interpersonal contact, we relieve ourselves through
chronic rationalization and the recycling of emotional experiences perdured
since infancy. After prolonged stretches of isolation, we might even
conclude that reflexivity is the central human experience and begrudgingly
sing its praises. However, emotion is more elemental to us than is reason;
we deflect it at considerable long-term risk, usually in exchange for the
short-term consolation of a "reasonable" safety. We ignore our own emotions
and the living reality of others usually in the same measure. To this
extent, a chasm of discoordination issues forth between our thinking selves
and our feeling selves as gradually "our acts become separated from our
intentions." [2]
Von Kleist concluded that the extant regressive solutions to redress this
unhappy divided state were of doubtful plausibility. Examples of such
include Rousseau's call for a return to the idyll of primitivism or the
mystical self-dissolution of Meister Eckhardt. The nature of the problem
must be reconceived. Perhaps our existential crisis might be resolved by
heightening or accelerating what appeared as an inexorable and ungainly
process of fractious individuation. At least this alternative response did
not go against the grain of what was actually occurring. Its impetus would
engender less resistance. By hastening this phenomenon, we might usher in
the advent of a new sort of human being, one blessed with the gracefulness
of a hyper self-awareness. The time machine would be set forward to the
future rather than backwards. Instead of arcadia, we would land upon the
shores of utopia. Since we could not recapitulate Paradise Lost, we might
find a "higher" and "enlightened" restoration of original innocence.
Spontaneity and self-forgetfulness would harmonize.
In the language of Hegel, we achieve through "synthesis" an "intimate union"
between reflexivity and naiveté. This "sublation" might be construed to
fulfill the purported direction of the soul from time immemorial, the goal
of Hubbard's homo novis project. Pure awareness becomes (somehow)
self-consciously aware of itself as pure awareness without the depletion of
vitality usually associated with excessive self-consciousness. Rather, by
Hubbard's account, self-awareness itself represents the very source of
creative energy. Indeed, the poet Schiller once envisioned a modern and
inspired man in whom "the dangers of detachment and uncertainty would be
balanced by a robust animal faith and capacity for spontaneous action."[3]
But the myth of the "Second Bite" is escapist fantasy and inherently
narcissistic. It promulgates a user-friendly, egocentric misunderstanding of
the spiritual life by omitting interpersonal ethics from its considerations.
Its articulation of human spirituality draws exclusively from ersatz
aesthetics, a spurious beauty (rather than a substantive) that "looks good"
or "makes an impression." In this fantasy, we become what seems most
pleasing to us at the moment. And at the moment, the accumulation of a grab
bag of supernormal powers seems a pleasant bonus to contemplate.
The mind/body dualism of a Cartesian worldview contains within its own
formulation of a split reality a sense of purpose. It construes human
experience as that of a mass of material occupied by a self-conscious
monadic soul whose task is to gain control over its material manifestation.
Certainty and perfect knowledge represent the path to overcome the
alienation of a discoordinated existence. Hubbard sought not Schiller's
*balance* between detachment and "robust animal faith." If one can control
the body perfectly, then one might control the world. First comes "clear,"
then "Operating Thetan."
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Notes:
[1] H. Von Kleist, "On the Puppet Theatre" in An Abyss Deep Enough, Letters
of Heinrich von Kleist, with a Selection of Essays and Anecdotes, ed. and
trans. by P. B. Miller (New York: Dutton, 1882), p. 216. found in Louis A
Sass, Madness and Modernism - Insanity in the Light of Modern Art,
Literature and Thought, (Cambridge, Massachusetts 1992), p 342.
[2] Louis A Sass, Madness and Modernism - Insanity in the Light of Modern
Art, Literature and Thought, (Cambridge, Massachusetts 1992), p 342.
[3] Sass, p. 343.
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ewsnead
--
The Lord: "Let there be light."
Elron: "Let there be cash."