{"id":1956,"date":"2011-03-17T21:54:24","date_gmt":"2011-03-18T01:54:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.gornahoor.net\/?p=1956"},"modified":"2020-03-17T00:11:37","modified_gmt":"2020-03-17T04:11:37","slug":"knowledge-and-power","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gornahoor.net\/?p=1956","title":{"rendered":"Knowledge and Power"},"content":{"rendered":"<blockquote><p>The fundamental being and expression [of Consciousness or the I] is Joy pulsating as Will-Power and manifesting Itself in an unspeakably sublime cosmic play. It is not a mere abstraction &mdash; a wilderness of Pure Being or Pure Nothing as some critics of Vedanta have imagined the abode of Reality to be. ~ <strong>John Woodroffe<\/strong>, <em>The World as Power<\/em> (p 320)\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Thomas Aquinas describes the effects of the Fall from the Primordial State as affecting faculties on both the spiritual and the psychic level, as represented in the following chart:<\/p>\n<table class=\"schema\">\n<tr>\n<th>&nbsp;<\/th>\n<th>Effect<\/th>\n<th>Description<\/th>\n<th>Antidote<\/th>\n<\/tr>\n<tr>\n<td rowspan=\"2\">Spirit<\/td>\n<td>Ignorance<\/td>\n<td>Intellect not ordered to the Logos<\/td>\n<td>Gnosis<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<tr>\n<td>Malice<\/td>\n<td>Will impotent to manifest the Logos<\/td>\n<td>Power<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<tr>\n<td rowspan=\"2\">Soul<\/td>\n<td>Weakness<\/td>\n<td>Thumos not ordered to arduousness<\/td>\n<td>Trial by suffering<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<tr>\n<td>Concupiscence<\/td>\n<td>Eros not ordered to the delectable<\/td>\n<td>Trial by love<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/table>\n<p>Hence, the regeneration of the Primordial State is effected through Knowledge and Power.<\/p>\n<h2>Knowledge<\/h2>\n<p>What do we know when we know it? From what has been described thus far:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>All our opinions, beliefs, theories are like so much straw<\/li>\n<li>What we have considered as obstacles are in reality privations, a demonstration of our own lack of power.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Woodroffe describes the concept of privation as understood in Tantra:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>\nConsciousness [the I] <em>seeming<\/em> to be unconsciousness, Joy <em>seeming<\/em> to be indifference or pain, free Play <em>seeming<\/em> to be necessity and determination.\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>In this seemingness, the I gives up his power to that which &#8220;seems to be&#8221; and doesn\u2019t recognize his own role in producing what he experiences:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>\nConsciousness, as the root Being-and-Becoming Power becomes real things \u2026 Thus, a block of stone is not &#8220;matter&#8221; only:  it is Consciousness as Joy and as Play &mdash; though the fact is veiled to ordinary minds. On the other hand, it is not an &#8220;idea&#8221; or &#8220;mental construct&#8221; only: it is Consciousness as Power constituting it as much and as active a reality as the experiencing and reacting mind is.\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>The solution is, according to Woodroffe, increasing knowledge at ever deeper levels to the point of self-realization:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>\nThere is need for the education and development of man\u2019s &#8220;knowing instruments&#8221;, giving him progressively higher and larger visions, through science and philosophy, through intuition and meditation, and finally revelation and realization.  \u2026 <em>Matter and Life are every whit as real and active as Mind<\/em>.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>This is the crux of the issue. Verbosity, opinions, repetition do not and never will constitute knowledge. <strong>To Know<\/strong> &mdash; in the highest sense, viz., episteme, gnosis, wisdom &mdash; is <strong>to be<\/strong>. Hence, we do not know the Idea until it has become Real for us as Life and as Matter. This is the Tantric teaching of the I as Power.<\/p>\n<p><!--more Click to read what Evola writes about the relationship of Power to Morality--><\/p>\n<h2>Power<\/h2>\n<p>In the <em>Individual and the Becoming of the World<\/em>, Evola describes the deepening process of making ideas real:<\/p>\n<ol>\n<li>First, there is the simple and pallid image of the idea<\/li>\n<li>Make it vivid in the imagination<\/li>\n<li>Perceive it exteriorly as a subjective hallucination<\/li>\n<li>Convince other centres of consciousness to perceive it as a collective hallucination<\/li>\n<li>Develop an ever more intense assertion of power until the same level of real existence is reached.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<p>Then at this point:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>\nin correspondence with a magical act (because a <em>magician could be defined as one who knows how to influence nature itself<\/em>), [the idea] would cease to be &#8220;false&#8221; and &#8220;subjective&#8221; by making itself instead &#8220;true&#8221; and &#8220;objective&#8221;. What was error or illusion becomes accordingly truth, through power. That is valid for any empirical, moral, or rational field whatsoever.\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Evola here does not spell out the obvious corollary. Whatever happens in any &#8220;empirical, moral or rational field whatsoever&#8221; is the result of the intention of an agent, someone or group that understands, and uses, this process or, better said, &#8220;magicians&#8221;.  How much of the world is under the spell of some collective hallucination or another? Only the Trial by Fire can break the spell. Evola\u2019s goes on to demonstrate the relationship between ontology and ethics.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>\nReal means perfectly willed. Unreal will mean therefore privation of the Will, imperfect and insufficient Will &mdash; and this is <em>evil<\/em>, just as, on the other hand, it is error. <em>Evil and error are one and the same thing in the sense that the common foundation to both is impotence<\/em>. Those doctrines are in truth of a fundamental value, currently almost forgotten, that placed evil in matter, meaning by this that residue of necessity that resists the idea &mdash; that is, freedom &mdash; and limits it. Matter &mdash; the Platonic &#8220;other&#8221; &mdash; is effectively the sign of imperfection of the act and, in as much existing, is connected to that fundamental &#8220;injustice&#8221; about which Anaximander, Parmenides, and Empedocles speak &mdash; and it is, essentially, evil. There is no other evil beyond necessity, of which matter, brute existence, is the evidence; and as long as the &#8220;I&#8221; will not be able avoid the experience of matter &mdash; of this &#8220;other&#8221; against and beyond him &mdash; he will be imperfect: <em>evil, impure, irrational<\/em>.\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>It is clear that freedom is not about satisfying desires, which is really a lack, a privation. Concupiscence represents a necessity that binds and restricts our will. The purpose of the Trial by Love, by substituting the satisfaction of personal desires with a disinterested love for the genuinely good or pleasurable, is to overcome concupiscence. Thus, commands such as &#8220;love your enemy&#8221; are to be understood in this light, as means to an end, not a universal moral principle in the Kantian sense. A blind hatred, on the other hand, is the result of an impure and irrational will, and often leads one to make poor or ineffective decisions.<\/p>\n<p>Weakness of the <em>thumos<\/em> leads a man to eschew suffering. Every form of pain or upset is felt to be an injustice. Instead, the Trial by Suffering will develop a detached attitude. In this respect, we can mention the idea of &#8220;intentional suffering&#8221;, that is, deliberately choosing the more arduous path in order to develop Power. Once again, commands such as &#8220;turn the other cheek&#8221; must be understood in this light.<\/p>\n<p>Now Evola summarizes his position on the identity of power and morals:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>\nSo the ethical problem and the metaphysical problem coincide: the measure of reality, as of the good, of the certain and of the true, is the perfection of actuality or power. <em>Per virtutem et potentiam idem intelligo<\/em>. [Spinoza, <em>Ethics<\/em>, &#8220;by virtue and power I mean the same thing.&#8221;] The good or virtue is potency, evil is impotence. There is no other evil except insufficiency and weakness, no other good except the will that is unconditionally sufficient in itself, and therefore free to be and do what it wills. The rest is nonsense and can be left to women, mystics, and poets. That today the meaning of the moral as cosmic worth has been lost, that up to now, it has been reduced to nothing more than the corroboration and canonisation of deficiency, weakness, and fear &mdash; of the plague of beautiful sentiments, of noble virtues, of holy ideals &mdash; that is, of the fundamentally <em>immoral<\/em>.\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The fundamental being and expression [of Consciousness or the I] is Joy pulsating as Will-Power and manifesting Itself in an unspeakably sublime cosmic play. It is not a mere abstraction &mdash; a wilderness of Pure Being or Pure Nothing as some critics of Vedanta have imagined the abode of Reality &hellip; <span class=\"continue-reading\"><a href=\"https:\/\/gornahoor.net\/?p=1956\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,110,54],"tags":[75,413],"class_list":["post-1956","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-evola","category-magical-idealism","category-tantra","tag-individual-and-the-becoming-of-the-world","tag-john-woodroffe"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gornahoor.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1956","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gornahoor.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gornahoor.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gornahoor.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gornahoor.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1956"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/gornahoor.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1956\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11785,"href":"https:\/\/gornahoor.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1956\/revisions\/11785"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gornahoor.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1956"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gornahoor.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1956"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gornahoor.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1956"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}