The Trivialization of Greek Mythology in the Modern Imagination

Among the general public, Greek mythology is often seen as a collection of entertaining stories that served as primitive attempts to explain natural phenomena before the rise of science. The gods are viewed as flawed, human-like characters engaging in cosmic soap operas, with myths reduced to moral fables or cultural folklore. There is a common belief that the Greeks themselves didn’t take these stories seriously, regarding them as poetic allegories rather than religious truths. Many assume Greek mythology forms an idiosyncratic system disconnected from Greek philosophy, reigion or serious spiritual practice. Its relevance is typically limited to its influence on Western art, literature, and popular culture, while its deeper symbolic, philosophical, and initiatory dimensions are overlooked.

Myth as Sacred Knowledge: The Golden Chain Approach

For the philosophers of the Golden Chain, especially the Neoplatonists who referred to themselves not as Neoplatonists but as the Successors of a tradition of wisdom that starts with Orpheus, continues with Pythagoras, Parmenides, and Plato and ends with the philosophers whom we call Neoplatonists, Greek mythology was not mere storytelling but a symbolic revelation of cosmic, ontological, and psychological truths. Myths were seen as divinely inspired narratives expressing the structure of reality, the soul’s relation to the cosmos, and the process of spiritual ascent. Figures like Zeus, Athena, or Dionysus embodied universal principles—intellect, wisdom, generative life—not just anthropomorphic deities. Myths were interpreted allegorically to uncover layers of metaphysical meaning, offering veiled teachings on the nature of the One/The Good (Εν-Αγαθόν in Greek), the Intellect (Nous/Νούς), and the Soul (Ψυχή). Far from obsolete, myths were integral to philosophical contemplation and religious ritual, serving as a bridge between human understanding and divine intelligibility, guiding the soul back to its source through symbolic initiation.

Interpreting the Brides of Zeus using the Golden Chain’s Approach

For the Neoplatonists, the mythological account of Zeus’ successive unions with divine brides in Hesiod’s Theogony symbolizes not literal genealogies, but rather the orderly procession of intelligible principles from the One through Nous to Soul and Cosmos. Each marriage represents a distinct mode of participation of multiplicity in unity, marking the stages of cosmic manifestation and return.

1. Metis (Μῆτις): The Internalization of Intellect

• Etymology: Metis means “wisdom,” “craft,” or “cunning intelligence” (from the Greek mētis)

• Metis, as cunning wisdom and reflective intellective discernment, symbolizes the first hypostasis of Nous.

• Zeus swallowing Metis represents the integration of reflective intellect (mêtis) into the immediate and unified intellective activity of the divine Nous.

• This is the first moment of unifying multiplicity within the divine intellect itself, preventing external division.

2. Themis (Θέμις): The Foundation of Cosmic Order

• Etymology: Themis derives from a root meaning “that which is established” or “law.”

• Themis, as the personification of divine law and order, symbolizes the harmonious articulation of the intelligible cosmos within Nous.

• Through Themis, Zeus institutes the principles of cosmic justice and the rhythmic order (κόσμος).

• This marriage signifies the transition from undifferentiated intellect to structured being (i.e., the Forms given order).

3. Eurynome (Εὐρυνόμη): The Harmony of Multiplicity

• Etymology: Eury- means “wide” or “broad,” and -nome comes from nomos, meaning “law” or “distribution.”

• Eurynome, the Oceanid embodying broad-ruling harmony, represents the ordering of multiplicity within unity.

• From this union arise the Charites (Graces), symbols of the emanation of beauty and symmetry.

• This reflects the procession of the many from the unified intelligible archetypes, without loss of unity.

4. Demeter (Δημήτηρ): The Procession into Generative Life

• Etymology: Often interpreted as “Earth Mother” (dē- from dea, goddess, and mētēr, mother)

• Demeter, goddess of fertility and agriculture, embodies the productive power of the divine intellect as it manifests in the generative and material order.

• Her marriage to Zeus symbolizes the descent of intelligible life into the realm of becoming, ensuring the continuity of life-cycles and soul generation.

5. Mnemosyne (Μνημοσύνη): The Memory of Intelligible Order

• Etymology: Mneme means “memory.”

• Mnemosyne, as memory, signifies the preservation of intelligible archetypes within the soul’s reflective power.

• Through her, Zeus fathers the Muses, representing the perpetuation of the Forms into the soul's contemplative and expressive activities.

• This reflects the soul's recollection (ἀνάμνησις) of its intelligible origin.

6. Leto (Λητώ): The Manifestation of Intelligible Light

• Etymology: Leto’s name may be linked to lethe (forgetfulness) or lathein (to be hidden)

• Leto, a Titaness of obscurity and modesty, symbolizes the latent luminosity of the intelligible order preparing to manifest.

• From her come Apollo (intellective light, harmony) and Artemis (the measure of cycles and transitions).

• This marriage reflects the emergence of cosmic light and measure, mediating between the intelligible and sensible realms.

7. Hera (Ἥρα): The Consummation of Cosmic Sovereignty

• Etymology: Possibly related to hērōs (“hero”) or hora (“season, maturity”).

• Hera, as the queen of the gods and guardian of lawful order, signifies the full realization of cosmic governance.

• Her union with Zeus represents the stabilization of the cosmos under divine providence (πρόνοια).

• This symbolizes the final articulation of the cosmos as a reflection of the divine intelligible order, completing the cycle of procession and preparing for the return (ἐπιστροφή).

Synthesis: Zeus as the Demiurgic Intellect (Nous)

In Neoplatonic terms, Zeus functions as the Demiurgic Nous, the paradigmatic intellect that contemplates the Forms within itself and orders the cosmos accordingly. His successive marriages represent the gradation of Being from the unified intelligible to the manifold sensible, each consort embodying a particular mode of participation in the divine.

The marital succession is not chronological but ontological, illustrating the descending procession of unity into multiplicity, while simultaneously hinting at the soul’s path of ascent through contemplation, memory, and the return to the One.

In Short:

• Zeus' marriages symbolize the stages of procession from Unity to Cosmic Order.

• Each consort represents a hypostasis or principle in the structure of reality.

• The myth dramatizes the unfolding of the One into the Many, while preserving the unity of the Whole.

The Final Step: The Birth of Athena

Let me now present the completion of the series with Athena, as it would fit within a Neoplatonic metaphysical reading, with Zeus as Nous (Cosmic Intellect), and the entire sequence as the progressive manifestation of Nous' inner potentialities, culminating in Sophia (Wisdom).

The Birth of Athena: The Culmination of the Marriages of Nous

In Neoplatonic philosophy, the birth of Athena (Sophia) from the head of Zeus (Nous) represents the final and perfect act of intellectual generation—the emergence of pure, unmediated wisdom from the fully articulated cosmic Intellect.

Contextual Recap:

• Through his successive unions with divine consorts—Metis (Intellective Cunning), Themis (Order), Eurynome (Harmony), Demeter (Generative Life), Mnemosyne (Memory), Leto (Intelligible Light), Hera (Cosmic Sovereignty)—Zeus progressively manifests the inner contents of Nous into ordered multiplicity, structuring the cosmos.

Athena's Birth: The Crown of Nous' Creative Activity

• Athena, born fully armed from Zeus' head, is not the product of an external union but rather the direct projection of Nous' own perfected contemplation of itself.

• This represents the pure actuality of intellect (ἐνέργεια νοητική), where Nous, having fully ordered and harmonized its contents through the preceding symbolic marriages, generates Sophia (Wisdom) in an immediate, self-reflexive act.

Symbolic Dimensions:

• Symbolic Neoplatonic Meaning of Zeus’ Head: The supreme intellectual principle (Nous), locus of Forms

• Athena’s Birth: The emergence of Sophia, the wise articulation of the Forms, fully conscious of their unity and order

• Born in Arms: Wisdom as active, ruling, and harmonizing force in both intelligible and cosmic orders

• No Mother (after Metis): Indicates the immediacy of Nous' self-generation; Sophia as the self-subsistent energy of Nous, beyond material mediation.

Completion of the Ontological Cycle:

• With Athena’s birth, the procession from the One through Nous reaches its zenith:

  • Nous contemplates the One → differentiates its internal logoi (via Metis, Themis, etc.) → culminates in Sophia (Athena), who governs both the intelligible realm and its cosmic reflection.

• Thus, Athena represents the fulfillment of the Demiurgic Nous' function:

  • Ordering the cosmos through wisdom

  • Governing it harmoniously

  • Reflecting the unity of the One in the multiplicity of beings.

Philosophical Parallel:

• This is analogous to Plotinus' teaching that Nous, in contemplating the One, begets itself and its perfect image (Sophia), which in turn becomes the paradigm for cosmic order.

Athena as the Return (Epistrophe)

• Moreover, Athena symbolizes the beginning of the soul's return (ἐπιστροφή) to its source. She:

  • Embodies the intellective wisdom by which the soul ascends

  • Recollects the Forms within itself and

  • Restores the cosmic harmony to the contemplation of the One.

Final Synthesis:

The succession of Zeus’ marriages represents the ontological unfolding of Nous' contents into cosmic principles, each consort embodying a necessary mode of participation in the divine intellect.

The birth of Athena from Zeus' head marks the completion and perfection of this process:

• It is the direct birth of Wisdom (Sophia)

• The crown of Nous' creative activity

• Ensuring that the cosmos is ruled by intellective order and conscious harmony.

Thus, in accordance to a Golden Chain approach to the interpretation of myths, this mythical event signifies the philosophical truth that all things return to their source through wisdom, and that Nous' self-contemplation is the ultimate principle of cosmic governance.

Addendum: The Role of Hephaestus and the Double Axe in Athena's Birth

Though Hesiod does not mention Hephaestus assisting in the birth of Athena through the head of Zeus, Apollodorus in his Bibliotheca (Library) provides an account that includes him. In the myth, Zeus suffers a tremendous headache, and to relieve him, Hephaestus splits open his head with a double-headed axe (πέλεκυς), allowing Athena to spring forth, fully armed.

Symbolic Elements & Neoplatonic Meaning

1. Hephaestus: The Divine Craftsman (Demiurgic Aspect)

• Hephaestus embodies the principle of divine craftsmanship—the logos of techne (τέχνη).

• He symbolizes the Demiurgic function of shaping form into order, the artificer who bridges intelligible forms and cosmic manifestation.

• In Neoplatonic cosmology, Hephaestus corresponds to the formative, ordering power of the Intellect (Nous), especially as it acts upon the plane of being to give structure and proportion.

In short: Hephaestus is the operative aspect of Nous, the artisan who makes the ideal Forms manifest in the intelligible and sensible cosmos.

2. The Double Axe (Πέλεκυς): The Cutting of Unity into Multiplicity (Without Division)

• The double axe symbolizes the act of differentiation within Nous:

  • The two blades represent duality within unity: the process by which indivisible intelligible principles are articulated into distinct logoi (rational principles).

  • It divides not in a destructive way, but in the sense of unfolding the One into intelligible multiplicity, preserving unity through this articulation.

Philosophical parallel: The One remains undivided, but Nous "differentiates the undifferentiated", generating the many intelligible forms.

3. The Splitting of Zeus’ Head: Nous' Self-Manifestation

• Zeus’ head represents the pinnacle of Intellect (Nous), where the Forms reside in unified contemplation.

• The “splitting” of the head symbolizes the moment Nous brings forth its latent potency into full actuality.

• This is the productive act of self-knowledge, where Nous contemplates itself and generates Sophia (Wisdom) as an active principle.

This reflects Plotinus’ teaching that Nous thinks itself, and in this act, its inner content becomes manifest.

4. Athena’s Birth: The Emergence of Sophia (Wisdom)

• Athena’s armed emergence signifies the fully-formed, active Wisdom that rules and orders both the intelligible and the cosmic realms.

• She is the energetic projection of Nous' perfect self-contemplation, embodying intellective order, measure, and ruling power.

5. Hephaestus as the Instrument of Manifestation

• Hephaestus’ act shows that the realization of Nous' potential requires a craftsman-principle:

  • The contemplation of Nous (Zeus) is actualized into order by techne (Hephaestus).

  • This reinforces the Neoplatonic teaching that the Demiurgic function is not a passive emanation, but an active shaping of being.

6. The Axe as the Symbol of Mediation

• The double-sided axe also symbolizes mediation:

  • It is the tool that connects unity to multiplicity, bridging the gap between intelligible contemplation and manifested wisdom.

  • Its symmetry reflects the harmonious proportion (symmetria) essential to all manifestation.

Synthesis: What Does This All Mean?

• The birth of Athena through the action of Hephaestus with a double axe represents:

  • The act of Nous differentiating its own unity into ordered multiplicity.

  • Hephaestus (techne) is the operative aspect of Nous, crafting the intelligible into articulated forms.

  • The double axe symbolizes the non-destructive articulation of unity into manifold logoi, preserving the One in the Many.

  • Athena's emergence is the epiphany of Sophia, the self-conscious wisdom of Nous, fully armed to govern and harmonize.

In Neoplatonic terms, this event dramatizes how Wisdom (Sophia) is born from the self-contemplation of the Divine Intellect, through the operative mediation of Techne (Hephaestus), as the cosmos comes to reflect the perfect order of the intelligible realm.

Short Form Summary (Neoplatonic Lexicon):

• Zeus' Head → Nous (Intellective Totality)

• Hephaestus → Demiurgic Techne (Formative Logos)

• Double Axe → Differentiating articulation of the One into Many

• Athena → Sophia (Wisdom), the ruling energy of Nous manifest in cosmic order.

Notice how under this interpretation the presence of Hermes attending the birth of Athena, meticulously presented in this wonderful article by Carmine Pisano, becomes easy to discern. Hermes as the messenger of the gods represents the carrier of Logos, in other words, the mediating principle between the intelligible realm (Nous) and the sensible world. How could a god with such a symbolic role be absent from this occasion? The Logos in Greek is a word that has many meanings, it can mean speech, and Hermes is the god of speech and oratory, but it can also refer to the structure of the cosmos that this speech refers to. Since wisdom (associated with Athena) entails an understanding of the order of the cosmos, the god who represents the mediating principle between that understanding and the attempt of language to accurately represent it is naturally present at her birth.

Conclusion

Far from being a collection of quaint stories or mere relics of primitive thought, Greek mythology embodies a profound symbolic language, through which the ancients expressed cosmic, ontological, and spiritual meanings. The philosophers of the Golden Chain—from Orpheus and Pythagoras to Proclus and beyond—understood myth as a veiled mode of wisdom, a sacred medium for contemplating the order of reality and the soul’s journey back to the One. Myths like the succession of Zeus' brides and the birth of Athena are not trivial tales of divine romances but allegories of the unfolding of intelligible principles—the procession from unity into multiplicity and the return through wisdom (Sophia) to the source. By restoring the philosophical and initiatory depth of myth, the Golden Chain reminds us that these myths are not museum pieces but living symbols of truth, inviting us to participate in the eternal dialogue between the human soul and the divine intelligible order.

The story that started once upon a time in Eleusis, at the site where the Eleusinian Mysteries took place, continues at what Callimachus calls the “most sacred of all islands” and a UNESCO World Heritage site, the island of Δήλος/Delos.

The name of the island comes from the Greek verb δηλόω which according to the Great Dictionary of the Greek language (Ancient & Modern) by Dimitris Dimitrakos (Δημήτρης Δημητράκος) has multiple meanings with the most relevant ones being: to manifest, show, reveal, make known, visible, bright, clear, announce, verify, come true, explain, signify.

Eleusis means arrival1. To go from Eleusis to Delos is to go from arrival to revelation. It is no accident that this was the birthplace of Apollo, the god of light, knowledge, and prophecy, nor that in 1956 the British psychiatrist Humphry Osmond in a letter to Aldous Huxley used the same root verb, preceded by the Greek word for soul, ψυχή/psyche, to coin the word psychedelic, for the substances that manifest and reveal the soul.

A geological examination of the island shows that it was created either because of volcanic activity, upon which it manifested in the surface, or it was revealed after a withdrawal of waters that had once flooded the surrounding areas. The etymology of its name plays with both views, either that of sudden manifestation or revelation, as the relevant Homeric hymn admits2.

Located in one of the areas in Greece that receives the most sunlight throughout the year with strong winds that often offer unparalleled visibility to all the nearby islands, the Cyclades, which were named that way because they were around (“cyclic”, κυκλάς) the sacred island of Delos, it is also the reason why Callimachus mentions that another name for it was Ιστίη (related to Εστία/Hestia) which means hearth, fireplace, altar3. It’s as if Delos was the sacred fire around which the other islands sat in ceremony to receive its light.

I accepted an unexpected invitation to visit with a few foreigners who were visiting from overseas. We started walking the island on a sunny morning. A unique feature of Delos is that it has temples of many religions. From one of the oldest Jewish synagogues in the world, to temples to Isis, and inscriptions mentioning Anubis, Harpocrates, and Sarapis4, to just mention a few, all are found in different parts of Delos.

Iamblichus notes5 that Delos had its own Mysteries, similar to the Eleusinian ones. In an attempt to purify the island given its sacred importance and make it fit for worship, the Athenians under instruction by the Delphic Oracle, eventually dug up all those who were buried there, reburied them in nearby islands, and issued a prohibition of deaths and births on the island6.

It was the center of the Delian League and its treasury, till Pericles decided to move it to Athens, which according to some scholars marks the transition of Athens “from idealistic hegemon to predatory ruler”7 which sets the stage for the Peloponnesian War.

It’s hard to take in the significance of the island on a single stroll. I slowed my pace, those who accompanied me marched on. Walking past ancient symbols, their combinations are often bizarre to the modern eye.

At the sanctuary of Dionysus you see a phallus on top of a marble relief of a rooster. Have you ever wondered why today the other word for rooster, namely the word cock, is associated with the penis, even though roosters don’t have one? Maybe this ancient association holds the answer to this riddle. But half-joking aside, let’s attempt to decode what this association could mean.

According to Maria Maragou’s excellent book Eleusinian Mysteries8, the rooster was a sacred animal to Persephone9, the Queen of the Underworld, and mother of the first Dionysus, Zagreus. The ancient Greek word for rooster is αλέκτωρ/alector which can etymologically be broken down to ἅλιος (Doric version of ήλιος/helios which means sun) and ἕκτωρ (which means the one who possesses), so the word in this etymological interpretation means the possessor of the light – apt, being in the island of Apollo.

As for the phallus (in Greek φαλλός, suspected to originate from the Indo-European root *bhel- which means “to blow, swell” but also to “shine, flash, burn”10), it represents potency and the fecund spirit of nature associated with fertility. Because the ancient Greek word for nature, φύσις, is correlated with the verb φυσώ, which means "to blow", and the word for spirit, πνεύμα, has its roots from the verb πνέω which also means to blow, and explains why the Greek word for breath, αναπνοή, is made out of ανα- which signifies repetition, and πνοή which is the noun for πνεώ, given that breathing resembles a repetitive kind of blowing. The other meaning, swelling, correlates with what is rising, growing, hence connects with the other verb related to φύσις, which is φυώ which means that which born, rises, becomes, and brought to light.

So the combination of those symbols, the rooster and the phallus, could simply mean that you need to be the possessor of the light in order to rise and shine. For the rooster crows at sunrise, when we become possessors of the light, which for many men is often accompanied with a morning erection, which directly correlates with potency.

This may be why the phallus was an apotropaic symbol in ancient Greece and Rome11, as the rising light is what wards away the darkness, associated with evil.

It’s also the key as to why there is a temple to Isis in Delos. For the myth of Dionysus Zagreus and his dismemberment at the hand of the Titans mirrors the myth of the dismemberment of Osiris, the consort of Isis. Both Dionysus and Osiris are gods associated with death and rebirth. In the myth of Osiris, Isis is able to find all the pieces of Osiris except his phallus and orders the priests “to pay to it the honours of a god and to set it up in their temples in an erect position”12, which is exactly how the phallus is positioned in the temple of Dionysus at Delos. The connection between Osiris and Dionysus is made even more plausible if we consider Plutarch's suggestion that the Mysteries of Eleusis, where Dionysus plays a crucial role, and those of Isis and Osiris, bear more than a passing resemblance13.

It is unfortunately likely that this potent intercultural sacred symbol was desecrated by mobs in the name of Christianity14, symbolically emasculating the spirit of classical antiquity by breaking off part of the phallus. No wonder that ushered the Dark Ages. The cock suffered a spiritual erectile dysfunction. The fecundity of light was to be no more.

The foreigners had already left. Alone I walked back through the residential quarter and whatever was salvaged of their magnificent mosaics.

At the House of Dolphins, we see Erotes riding dolphins. The Greek word for dolphin is δελφίνι which relates to the word for womb/uterus, δελφύς, because dolphins, being mammals, have a womb. It also relates with the Apollonian sacred site of Δελφοί/Delphi, a site originally dedicated to the goddess Gaia (another word for Earth in Greek), it being a symbolic representation of the Earth’s womb15.

According to myth, Apollo arrives and kills the serpent Python living there, that could be seen as a symbolic representation of the umbilical cord, which would also explain why Delphi is later called the navel of the Earth (Gaia) since that’s what’s left after the umbilical cord is cut. For a newborn to step into the world of the light (Apollo) from the dark uterus of its mother (Earth/Gaia), it needs to have its umbilical cord (the serpent Python) cut. Apollo severs our connection to the Earth, matter, incarnation, in order for us at some point to become light (note that photons don’t have mass/“earth”).

In the myth, once he kills the serpent, he transforms into a dolphin and guides a group of Minoans to become the first priests of Apollo at Delphi16. The dolphin is an apt symbol for Apollo as it needs to head upwards towards the light in order for it to breathe, often flying out of the sea in the process. The ascent to the light, mirrors the erotic ascent of the soul towards the light of Beauty and the Good17, the place where our spirits can truly breathe, which is why Erotes ride the dolphins: both are heading in the same direction, and each of them flies in their own way.

Time flies too, and now the foreigners were waiting for me to return. I felt I needed to return to Delos with some natives who remember its significance. I called my friend Keon18. I tell him we need to return to Delos together. Do a ceremony there.

He told me there was an ancient Greek ceremony that took place in Delos, for the purpose of creating a sacred flame. The light of the sun and lenses were used to generate a fire in a ceremonial tripod. That sacred flame was then taken via boat first to the island of Lemnos and then to the Sanctuary of the Great Gods at the island of Samothrace, and used for the commencement of the Kabeirian Mysteries, which were even older than the Mysteries at Eleusis, and were dedicated to the Great Mother Goddess.

That sounded like a plan. The sacred light was to rise again.

“Do you think there could be ancient Greek mystics living today?” I asked my friend Michael Michailidis, who started Ancient Greece Revisited. Maybe he knew where I could begin my search.

“Well, I doubt there could be any unbroken lineage holders, but funny you should ask because I was recently invited to a solstice ceremony at Eleusis. Want to join?”

There couldn't have been a more auspicious place to start my search than a ceremony at Eleusis, the site of the most famous Mysteries in classical antiquity. Of course, I accepted the invitation.

I was instructed to wear white clothing. We were going to drive there from Athens and meet someone there that would introduce us to the rest.

We arrive and notice that a group, mostly dressed in white, were already inside the archaeological site. I remember the entire thing was about to begin when we arrived, so we didn't have a lot of time for socializing. However, I was introduced to one person before the whole thing begun: Κέων Λοκρός Εσπέριος (Keon Lokros Esperios).

He was wearing a t-shirt with some interesting ancient Greek symbols weaved together, but more than the t-shirt what struck me was that there was something about him that I couldn't quite place that intrigued me and I made a mental note I needed to properly meet him at a later point that day.

A middle-aged woman started talking with a stentorian voice, welcoming us, and immediately started sharing information about the true direction from which the initiates were coming to Eleusis. It was assumed everyone knew about the significance of the place and simply wanted to get on with knowing more. It felt like an on-site lecture, but with undertones of reverence that academics usually don't exhibit.

“Don't step over that,” people would remind one another pointing to the foundations of the temple of Artemis and Poseidon located at the entrance, as the group moved towards a location where rather than a lecture, the same woman noted she'd be burning a tiny piece of pork as an offering, near a place where candidates for initiation would do the same in ancient times, symbolically burning away their lower nature. It was mostly symbolic, but people still observed the proceeding with a certain quiet solemnity.

We passed through the propylaea which served as the architectural demarcation point between the sacred and the profane, and made our way to the telesterion, being shown along the way places that could have been possible entrances to the underground chambers where it is believed parts of the original ceremony took place.

We sat at the telesterion where we heard more about the Mysteries along with recitations of certain ancient Greek religious texts. “The Mysteries were imitations of divine events, but we, having had our lineage broken, can only imitate that imitation…” the woman said lamenting the loss of ancient Greek religious continuity given the destruction of ancient Greek temples and the religious persecution the Christians waged over the centuries1. The ceremony ended with a reading out of a probably incomplete list of individuals who used to be hierophants at Eleusis, as a form of tribute.

I approached the woman who had led the ceremony as I wanted a copy of that list to facilitate my own retrocognitions. She was gracious and just gave it to me, and we started a brief conversation.

At some point during our conversation, I couldn't resist but to simply directly ask. Did she remember? Meaning, did she remember any past life of hers in Ancient Greece, partaking in some aspect of ancient Greek religion and mysticism?

My question didn't seem to register, and I didn't push further. I'm not sure whether it was because she was merely a scholar with a fervor for her country's tradition instead of a mystic or whether she simply was reluctant to answer such a personal question from a stranger. Either way, I walked away.

I wandered among the ancient ruins, reflecting on the majesty that once was, overcome with a characteristic melancholy that comes over me when visiting ancient Greek temple ruins, something the Welsh call hiraeth, a word tantalizingly similar in sound to hierophant.

I found a tree that drew me to sit under its shade and decided to meditate there, only later noticing the carvings on the ancient marble nearby wrote of a “seat of the philosophers”2.

It felt just right. I closed my eyes and went within. This was a sacred place.

When I opened my eyes after an indeterminate amount of time, I realized everybody had left, and I remembered they were going to all gather at a nearby café aptly named Kykeon.

I made my way there, met the people who drove me there, and noticed the man I had met at the beginning of the ceremony I wanted to get to know better. I approached Κέων and asked him to join us. I'm not exactly sure why I spared all the small talk, but the moment he sat down, with no prior introduction, I just looked at him straight in the eye and asked him:

“Do you remember?”

“Yes.” he answered without flinching.

He then went on to talk about how he did a ceremony at Mt. Olympus in which through the mystical experience that accompanied it, he remembered he used to be an ancient Greek priest of Dionysus, serving at Delphi. For those who are unaware, Delphi was dedicated half the year to the god Apollo, but the rest of the year, when Apollo left for Hyperborea, was dedicated to Dionysus. He even remembered his ancient Greek name, Κέων, and looked for it in modern databases of ancient Greek inscriptions and indeed found an ancient Greek priest of Dionysus at Delphi with the same name. Being a person trained in the natural sciences, he was dumbfounded. But the memories kept coming, which led him to form a ceremony circle to revive and participate in ancient Greek ceremonies.

I didn't expect I'd find an ancient Greek mystic living today at my first attempt, but here he was, sitting right across me. We shared descriptions of our mystical experiences, which often sounded like two people who have been to similar places they cannot name yet recognize similarities among them in their descriptions.

At the café named after the mysterious drink the ancient Greeks prepared for the mysteries, we discussed the evidence3 suggesting it probably contained some psychedelic properties that facilitated mystical experiences. Michael had already dedicated an entire episode on that hypothesis, nevertheless it was still considered controversial in Greece even among circles like the ones we were just in. We agreed to meet again, to continue our conversations.

Some time ago, after having a better understanding of the occult and reading about nominative determinism and the fascinating empirical studies that lent it support, it dawned on me that our names are like mantras that are repeated throughout our lives on many occasions. It's as if we're casting a spell on ourselves by identifying and being identified by a name and its meaning. So if we're doing that, then what spell would we want to cast?

I liked my first name. Its most common etymological meaning is the defender of men4, so I didn't feel like changing that. However, my last name in Greek literally means something like “someone who sets traps” and if you read it as a family name in Greek it literally reads as “a family that is a trap”. That wasn't a spell I wanted to keep casting. So once upon a time I was reading about the Dionysian Mysteries and came across an adjective of Dionysus called Λύσιος (Lysios), which means he who dissolves and resolves, thereby freeing. It immediately clicked as the opposite of my last name. So I decided to adopt it.

Fast-forward to a café under the Acropolis. Its name: Dionysus. That's the café my new friend, Κέων, chose to have our meeting. We spoke about the mysteries with passion. I told him about the new name I adopted early in the conversation, and then at some later point, as I was talking about what needs to be done for humanity to wake up, Κέων stops me with his eyes sparkling, and his pupils dilated and exclaims: “Lysios!” to point out the congruence between what I was saying and who I had named myself to be.

It was only much later that I found out that the ancient Greeks considered it a sin to have a name that didn't correspond to your essence5, which is why some of them ended up with a different name than the one that was given to them at birth, Plato being a famous example, as his birth name wasn’t Plato but Aristocles. Plato meant “broad”, and it was supposedly given to him because of his broad shoulders by his wrestling coach, but I’m sure it stuck because of his broad mind.

I may have chosen Lysios before that day under the Acropolis6. But it was after that exclamation at the café named after Dionysus that I felt it somehow became official. For I did not come here to entrap people but to set them free.

The story continues with the post From Arrival to Revelation: From Eleusis to Delos

About a year ago in a post entitled A New Philosophy I wrote the following:

Throughout most of my life, I’ve been quite private and solitary about my philosophical practice despite it being a major part of my life. Others would only see some polished fragments (many of which are in my archives) that were the result of philosophical activity but not the activity itself. Not even my immediate family knows exactly what it is that I’ve been doing…It is now that I finally feel ready to reveal more of my philosophical process and lead others through the rites of passage philosophical adventures require. Even those who are not meant to travel with me, may derive some benefit from the captain’s logs recorded during my life’s quest. That’s another reason why I started Numinous Quest; to help fellow travelers with lessons learned, experiments attempted, dead ends reached, and challenges overcome, while generating resources to keep on traveling and logging my way out of Plato’s Cave. One more thread leading out of the labyrinth and back to the love that is waiting for us all.

Though the rites of passage have been available to anyone who feels called to them through my philosophical guidance website, my philosophical process did not get revealed. This and more, changes from today onwards.

New Features

The new chat feature recently introduced by Substack, now available for both iOS and Android mobile devices, offers a solution to a concern I had, which was that the potentially daily and real time updates revealing and documenting my philosophical life might prove too much for anyone’s email inbox and create subscriber fatigue. Thankfully, with Substack chat this is no longer an issue since chat updates and newsletter posts are different and subscribers have full control over what notifications they get and where they get them (e.g. email inbox, mobile device push notifications). You can learn how to participate in a Substack chat here.

That was not the only concern that kept me from sharing my process. The truth is that the profound transformations of the past few years have shifted not just my process but my own worldview so far off the Overton window that I am concerned with the overall consequences of being more open about it, especially when it comes to writing as opposed to oral discourse, as I share Plato’s aversion to written discourse for the same reasons. As I have written elsewhere1:

This critique of knowledge2 is what provides the key to Plato’s aversion of written discourse versus that of oral discourse:

In oral discourse, there is the concrete presence of a living being. There is genuine dialogue, which links two souls together, and an exchange in which, as Plato says, discourse can respond to the questions asked of it and defend itself. Thus, dialogue is personalized: it is addressed to a specific person, and corresponds to his needs and possibilities. Just as, in agriculture, it takes time for a seed to germinate and develop, many conversations are necessary for knowledge to be born in the soul…Dialogue does not transmit ready-made knowledge or information; rather, the interlocutor conquers his knowledge by his own effort. He discovers it by himself, and thinks for himself. Written discourse, by contrast, cannot respond to questions. It is impersonal, and claims immediately to give a knowledge which is ready-made, but lacks the ethical dimension represented by voluntary assent. There is no real knowledge outside the living dialogue.3

Of course this begs the question as to why did Plato write all these dialogues in the first place. One answer is that the dialogues were written as exhortations to philosophy, belonging to the ancient Greek genre of protreptics4, aimed at people beyond the confines of the Academy and Athens. Axiothea of Phlius is said to have traveled to join the Academy as one of Plato’s first female students after reading The Republic5.

Thankfully modern technology has enabled hybrid environments that I hope will overcome some of the limitations of written discourse outlined above. For example, even the chat feature mentioned earlier is a mixture containing elements of both written and oral discourse given that though it is in writing, it could be said that one is often responding to particular subscribers in speeds approximating real time oral discourse. Moreover, with mobile devices and high speed internet availability increasing globally, I could simply drop an impromptu video conference link in the chat and we could switch to oral discourse on the fly, which could help personalize the experience seamlessly. So if you want to participate in any upcoming chats make sure you add the Substack app in your mobile device and follow the instructions necessary to participate. For a limited time I’ll post all my chats for both free and paid subscribers so everyone can get a taste of what kind of content I will be sharing, but after that some chat posts will start being for paid subscribers only.

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The result is as important as the process

Ἕκαστον γὰρ δένδρον ἐκ τοῦ ἰδίου καρποῦ γινώσκεται. Οὐ γὰρ ἐξ ἀκανθῶν συλλέγουσι σῦκα, οὐδὲ ἐκ βάτου τρυγῶσι σταφυλήν. Ὁ ἀγαθὸς ἄνθρωπος ἐκ τοῦ ἀγαθοῦ θησαυροῦ τῆς καρδίας αὐτοῦ προφέρει τὸ ἀγαθόν, καὶ ὁ πονηρὸς ἄνθρωπος ἐκ τοῦ πονηροῦ θησαυροῦ τῆς καρδίας αὐτοῦ προφέρει τὸ πονηρόν· ἐκ γὰρ τοῦ περισσεύματος τῆς καρδίας λαλεῖ τὸ στόμα αὐτοῦ.

For every tree is known by its own fruit. For men do not gather figs from thorns, nor do they gather grapes from a bramble bush. A good man out of the good treasure of his heart brings forth good; and an evil man out of the evil treasure of his heart brings forth evil. For out of the abundance of the heart his mouth speaks.6

Though I believe there is value in sharing philosophical theories and processes, the fruit of philosophy is ultimately its effect on the quality of one’s life, its direction, and the legacy it leaves behind for oneself and others. Thus, a true evaluation of a philosopher’s work entails an understanding of how their process is applied in life and what fruits it generates by that application. To share the fruits that are generated practically means sharing more concrete details about how my philosophical investigations and experiments affect the quality, direction, and work of my life. Since philosophy is not merely designing instruments of the soul but learning how to play them in service to the art of living, demonstrating the music your life makes through the playing of a philosophical symphony can serve as an enticement and protreptic for others to learn too.

The relation between one’s philosophical process, the quality, and direction of one’s life is not, however, a simple one. For some philosophers may create instruments of the soul to play philosophical flamenco while their students use the same instruments to play philosophical jazz. Moreover, the quality of the philosophical flamenco or jazz may change depending on who is playing the instrument, and those who came up with some genre will not necessarily be the best ones in it.

In short, one philosopher can come up with brilliant methodologies and insights that countless people find useful yet fail to apply them skillfully in their own life heading in one direction, while another may invent nothing new, yet apply old tools he didn’t invent to create a wonderful life heading to a completely different direction. No matter the choices any particular philosopher makes, the point I’m making is that we can learn something from everyone, it being wise to judiciously apply the Delphic Maxim Ἄκουε πάντα (translation: Listen to everything/everyone) but of course not in isolation from the application of the others.

That being said, my heritage, by birth and orientation, is nevertheless Greek, and follows an understanding of philosophy that embodies what Kierkegaard astutely singled out as the Greek principle:

"To live like a Greek philosopher, existentially expressing and existentially probing the depths of what he must call his view of life, [such a person] would be regarded [nowadays] as a lunatic. Let it be so."7

The Greek principle…is the very antithesis of abstract thought. "While abstract thought seeks to understand the concrete abstractly, the subjective thinker has conversely to understand the abstract concretely."8

This is why starting to share more concrete details of my life, is not an unconscious surrender to the current of widespread narcissism in our midst but a conscious attempt to demonstrate what it looks like to live the philosophically abstract concretely, and what kind of fruits grow out of this exercise.

This orientation aligns with the original ancient Greek conception of philosophy, as I’ve shown elsewhere9. However, such a start cannot begin without a preliminary acknowledgement of a significant development.

From Philosopher to Mystic

Recent posts10 have already mentioned that the past few years have been a prolonged dive into mysticism. This was not the result of my academic education but a result of my own initiative. In fact, nowhere in my undergraduate or graduate studies in philosophy was the role of the Mysteries ever emphasized. And yet it was only after my mystical experiences that I finally started truly understanding Plato for the first time.

Ironically enough, Plato has Socrates explicitly say in Phaedo that in order to practice philosophy the right way, one needs to become a genuine mystic:

Eἰσὶν γὰρ δή, ὥς φασιν οἱ περὶ τὰς τελετάς, ‘ναρθηκοφόροι ’μὲν πολλοί, βάκχοι δέ τε παῦροι. Οὗτοι δ᾽ εἰσὶν κατὰ τὴν ἐμὴν δόξαν οὐκ ἄλλοι ἢ οἱ πεφιλοσοφηκότες ὀρθῶς. Ὧν δὴ καὶ ἐγὼ κατά γε τὸ δυνατὸν οὐδὲν ἀπέλιπον ἐν τῷ βίῳ ἀλλὰ παντὶ τρόπῳ προυθυμήθην γενέσθαι: εἰ δ᾽ ὀρθῶς προυθυμήθην καί τι ἠνύσαμεν, ἐκεῖσε ἐλθόντες τὸ σαφὲς εἰσόμεθα, ἂν θεὸς ἐθέλῃ, ὀλίγον ὕστερον, ὡς ἐμοὶ δοκεῖ.

There are indeed, as those concerned with the mysteries say, many who carry the thyrsus but the Bacchants are few. These latter are, in my opinion, no other than those who have practiced philosophy in the right way. I have in my life left nothing undone in order to be counted among these as far as possible, as I have been eager to be in every way. Whether my eagerness was right and we accomplished anything we shall, I think, know for certain in a short time, god willing, on arriving yonder.11

The thyrsus was a ceremonial staff associated with Bacchus. I will go deeper into its meaning in later posts. What Socrates is saying here is that many can merely carry it12 without being true initiates (Bacchants). However, those who practice philosophy the right way become true initiates. Thus, good philosophers become genuine mystics; or to put it another way, philosophers who have not become mystics are basically guilty of philosophical malpractice.

It’s time we gather our grapes from the vine instead of the bramble bush.

Only then can we make and distribute the wine.

It is time.

But to understand what this means, I have to share, in the next posts, some of what has happened. It starts once upon a time in Eleusis.

For sometimes the past has a future we don’t expect.

About four years ago, I gave a talk on themes worked through Philosophical Fight Clubs I organized throughout Europe at the time. The setting was the BIL unconference, an event dear to my heart that I’ve participated and given talks in many times, including its inaugural instance in Monterey back in 2007. I remember debating in my mind as to the title I would put on the whiteboard. The first option was Political Entrepreneurship. But then I thought, especially given there were multiple concurrent talks taking place, that something catchier would draw more people, so I opted for On the Freedom to Start Your Own Country:

The conceptual framework behind Imaginal States is a continuation of the ideas from that talk in 2008 that comes as an alternative and response to the many bold efforts and conjectures related to what I believe is a more general space that could be appropriately filed under a heading that happened to be the alternative title of my talk: political entrepreneurship. This is why it also features as the subtitle to my Imaginal States short presentation that you can download at the end of this post.

Because whether you’re talking about Seasteading, Charter Cities, or a Network State, the underlying theme is the spirit of entrepreneurship as applied to politics and governance, resulting in alternative ways of living.

Nowadays more and more people are becoming convinced that contemporary governments have become victims of different degrees of regulatory capture. The paths through which our voices turn into legislation have become hijacked to the point their function appears to prevent rather than enable change, exasperating those who try to use them to bring about social change to the point of exhaustion, serving more like political window dressing, hindering our ability to change fast enough in response to ever complex conditions thereby increasing the probability of social collapse1.

Meanwhile, new powerful methods of controlling media exposure and curated consumption in echo chambers developed or enabled by social media and search giants, like Google and Facebook, affect the so-called Overton window, especially when coupled with active censorship by collaboration between governments and social media companies2. When you add to it the rise of total surveillance states3 and their marriage with capitalism4 with advances in research related to behavior change5, all being leveraged by the status quo to manipulate the contents of our voices and gaslight us as to what they ought to be, these developments, along with a host of other social justice issues, are generating enough disillusionment that the inner scales among an increasingly larger set of citizens around the world are tipping towards exit rather than voice. I do not see this trend abating.

Unprecedented technological unemployment6 and socio-economic inequality7, mass migrations that will happen due to climate change8, global ecosystem collapse9, rainwater everywhere on Earth becoming unsafe to drink10, noticeable worldwide inflation11, disrupted supply chains12, younger generations being the most disillusioned in living memory13, a crisis in our social imaginary14, all combined with the betrayed promises of the legacy nation states15…what we’re witnessing is a version of systemic collapse in real time that is bound to generate significant social upheavals and inevitable re-organizations in the way we live.

Rather than defending a global system that has brought us to this point, the framework of Imaginal States is akin to a bold conjecture on how to start over, giving us a chance to reconfigure the sociopolitical units we want to be a part of in order to deal with the complex set of existential global challenges we have to face.

Imaginal States

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“To be GOVERNED is to be watched, inspected, spied upon, directed, law-driven, numbered, regulated, enrolled, indoctrinated, preached at, controlled, checked, estimated, valued, censured, commanded, by creatures who have neither the right nor the wisdom nor the virtue to do so. To be GOVERNED is to be at every operation, at every transaction noted, registered, counted, taxed, stamped, measured, numbered, assessed, licensed, authorized, admonished, prevented, forbidden, reformed, corrected, punished. It is, under pretext of public utility, and in the name of the general interest, to be placed under contribution, drilled, fleeced, exploited, monopolized, extorted from, squeezed, hoaxed, robbed; then, at the slightest resistance, the first word of complaint, to be repressed, fined, vilified, harassed, hunted down, abused, clubbed, disarmed, bound, choked, imprisoned, judged, condemned, shot, deported, sacrificed, sold, betrayed; and to crown all, mocked, ridiculed, derided, outraged, dishonored. That is government; that is its justice; that is its morality.” ― Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, General Idea of the Revolution in the Nineteenth Century

Never has Proudhon’s description rang truer than today. Proudhon couldn’t have imagined the extraordinary extent by which modern technology and capitalism has enabled an unprecedented amount of control and surveillance over our lives (aka surveillance capitalism). How did we get here and is there a way out of here, is the subject of this series of posts.

The Ubiquity of the Nation State

The nation state is to contemporary humans what the sea is to fish: It's hard to imagine life outside it. There are few places and circumstances in the world where contemporary humans can feel how it is to live outside the nation state. Remote wilderness (deserts, jungles, deep caves, etc.), the polar regions, and the open sea ― barring outer space ― are some of the few places available on earth where we can recover the feeling of what it means to be free and far from any probable intervention of the nation state. Yet the nation state and its borders are a relatively modern invention, usually traced to the Peace of Westphalia treaties in 1648, with passports as we use and understand them today only making their appearance in the 20th century.

Borders and Passports

Modern passports for individuals were only instituted in 19201 in the aftermath of the First World War. Before 1920, especially if you were an individual instead of a merchant carrying goods, other than for some notable exceptions2, if you wanted to go somewhere, provided you were not a slave, you just went. That doesn’t mean such journeys were without risk or that you would be granted entrance wherever you went. Territories between city states that were not farmlands or hunting grounds were often the home of brigands who would often rob travelers, and earlier versions of the passport were literally papers that would grant you safe passage and permission to enter through the city gates3.

Primitive borders started making their appearance after segments of humanity became sedentary and needed to delineate and protect their farmlands. In fact, the invention of geometry in Egypt is attributed to the need “to preserve the layout and ownership of farmland, which was flooded annually by the Nile river”4. However, even when the purpose was not specifically to protect farmland or cities, such borders were defensive rather than political in nature, in that they were not mutually acknowledged through signed treaty by all relevant parties, let alone a global organization like the United Nations, but simply recognized by the people that enforced them. The Qin Empire that built the Great Wall of China and the Roman Empire that built Hadrian’s Wall, did not reach any agreement with the tribes of the Eurasian Steppe or of Caledonia respectively before proceeding to build, but these constructions simply became de facto borders by the unilateral action of those who built them. As a result borders changed frequently, like the following map of borders in Europe between 1000 to 2000 demonstrates.

According to one geographer5, the first boundary delimited by treaty occurred in 843 CE, “when Charlemagne’s three grandsons divided their grandfather’s empire; however, no clear demarcation on the ground was made”6. Until the fateful year of 1648, the only border that was jointly agreed, written into a signed charter, and marked on the ground was between the people of Andorra and France dating back to September 8, 12787. However, the generally agreed date for the invention of borders occurs with the treaties that usher the modern age and bring about the Peace of Westphalia at 16488.

It is important to note that before those treaties, allegiances played a larger role than position in contiguous territory:

The feudal system was based on much more fluid relations between power and territory than in the first empires, because the vassal’s observance of hierarchical subordination to his lord was by far more important than control of any territory. The vassal was subject to several authorities, whose territories sometimes overlapped or were physically distant.9

The Peace of Westphalia & its Consequences

The Peace of Westphalia came after the Thirty Years' War which was “one of the most destructive wars in European history, it caused an estimated 4.5 to 8 million deaths, while some areas of Germany experienced population declines of over 50%”10. During that war the different parties would often not maintain sufficiently large standing armies, so they would often hire professional mercenaries. When for some reason or another they were unable to pay them or whatever lands they could bestow could not translate into immediate sustenance or enough liquidity for the mercenaries, the mercenaries would simply pillage and plunder to make up for the difference11. After 30 years of bloody warfare the warring parties came together to negotiate peace treaties and establish a new order.

The new order that was established was based

…on the principle cuius regio eius religio, which recognized the prince’s right to impose his religion on his subjects, that is, the right to exercise his supreme and exclusive authority (political, fiscal, judicial, and military [aka the principle of sovereignty]) within a given geographical area, without interference of other states.12

This is what enabled what we now call the monopoly of violence which the sociologist Max Weber made it one of the defining characteristics of the state:

Weber describes the state as any organization that succeeds in holding the exclusive right to use, threaten, or authorize physical force against residents of its territory. Such a monopoly, according to Weber, must occur via a process of legitimation.13

We will talk about the importance of processes of legitimation later. Needless to say once the treaties were signed it became crucial to delineate that territory in which the monopoly of violence could be exercised.

From a geographical point of view, the first corollary of the principle of sovereignty was an urgent need to establish clear dividing lines among princely territories, which set off a race for borders aiming at extending them and, at the same time, homogenizing the peoples within them. The subjects of the same prince had to be able to recognize each other, understand each other, and obey the same distinctive characteristics and the same laws. In short, they had to become—even if the word only appeared much later—a nation.

This technocratic requirement, though it made possible the development of domestic capitalist markets for European nations14, had catastrophic future consequences15 the effects of which we’re still experiencing today. For example, notice how it relates to the war in Ukraine via this brilliant thread by Kamil Galeev:

A key insight from this thread is the realization that diversity is our natural state:

To demonstrate this, Galeev uses a linguistic map of Anatolia in 1910:

The Ottoman Empire exhibited a lack of willingness to homogenize everyone living within its borders which led to its lands being incredibly diverse16. However, once the requirements of Westphalian style nationalism were applied, the entire region turned into chaos prompting ethnic cleansing and the traumatic uprooting and displacement of millions of people17:

This is why he issues us a warning:

End of Part 1. In future parts of this series we’ll continue listing some additional consequences of the nation state as conceptualized after the Peace of Westphalia, critically consider its limitations, and try to envision alternatives that can generate a better future for us all.

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Before we begin with Part 2 of The Cosmic Game, here’s a quick recap of Part 1:

1. Certain extraordinary experiences reveal that we are not the character we play in each lifetime, reincarnation is real, and we are effectively immortal.

2. There is an Otherworld that exists on another plane of existence. When our character dies, we tend to visit it before reincarnating, but can have access even while incarnated. However, if we wanted to be more precise, using the plural Otherworlds would be more accurate since there are many planes of existence beyond the one we experience in everyday life and the one we experience right after death.

3. Spiritual traditions across the world and throughout history have created all sorts of ways to facilitate crossings into the Otherworlds, understanding the importance of guides to help us integrate what we experience and see there, producing elaborate terminologies around these processes and their effects1.

4. The experiences related to crossing significant thresholds in the spectrum of awakening, which I call ecstasies, can radically transform those who have them.

5. Different traditions give a variety of titles to people who cross, depending on how they crossed and how far they’ve gone, what control they have over and during their journeys, and what abilities and virtues they exhibit because of them.

6. Awakenings are drastic shifts in awareness, that can be both behind and beyond the veil.

Video Games, Delusions, and Defenses

As you may have already noticed from the summary above, there are common elements between popular video games and what we discover about reality and our attempts to describe it. For example:

• We play characters that die but can respawn2 back in the game.

• There are different levels that you can go through, usually by training to unlock certain skills necessary for navigating them.

• There are elaborate rankings and titles that are given to those who have successfully completed the different stages of training and achievement.

In some video games, you can choose which kind of character to play. Many spiritual traditions claim the same is true of the Cosmic Game, that we indeed select both the character and the kind of calling we attempt to fulfill in the game of life, but most of us forget it the moment we are born.

As we accustom ourselves to life, we gradually develop both a model for what we think the game is and for what we’re supposed to do in it. This sensemaking process doesn’t happen in a vacuum but in various environments with the people that raise us3.

During that process, when certain needs are not sufficiently met, or we find ourselves in harmful circumstances, we incur trauma.

Trauma is any type of distressing event or experience that can have an impact on a person's ability to cope and function. Trauma can result in emotional, physical, and psychological harm4.

Traumas and ecstasies are two important factors affecting our relationship to truth:

Our Calling: Evolution, Love & the Cosmic Game

The people and culture that raise us will often overrule our own experience because it doesn’t match theirs or because of individual and collective delusions and defenses. Some parents do champion their children’s calling, others, shun it. The psychologist James Hillman did not believe we are simply a product of our parental upbringing, what he called the parental fallacy, and used studies of identical twins separated at birth to show how easy it is for intrinsic tendencies to be falsely attributed to parental styles5.

Hillman used the term acorn for that seed within us that carries the code of our character, that is not the result of our past but an intrinsic blueprint and forward force, present at birth and throughout our lives, pushing us uniquely to our destiny. Some hear it as a voice, others sense it as a feeling. The Greeks called it the daimon; the Romans, the genius; both instances of tutelary deities, mentoring us from other planes towards the fulfillment of our destiny. The world’s most archetypical philosopher, Socrates, openly admitted being guided by it according to Plato6 and Plutarch7.

Though each of these concepts has its own hue of meaning, they are all interrelated in one way or another, so I’ll use the word calling as an umbrella term, with metaphors and analogies related to seeds or trees. For example, though different seeds resemble each other, not all of them grow into the same kind of tree or plant. Some seeds grow into massive redwoods, others into small alfalfa. Throughout our lives, others will make judgments as to who we are, what we should do, and who we ought to become. But few of them can feel the inner workings of our soul. It’s crucial to discern who to listen to, accept our nature, and be patient with our current level of development. We won’t grow properly if others convince us we’re alfalfa when we’re a redwood, and it’s absurd for the redwood seed to judge itself for not being a fully grown redwood when it’s only in the beginning of its development.

From the myriad of options out there, some attract us more than others for reasons that are often inscrutable. If we don’t trust the desires of our souls, we will never look for the sun we need to grow into who we are meant to be. However, unhealed traumas and unintegrated ecstasies often lead to defenses and delusions that skew our judgments and desires towards goals that are not conducive to our evolution. The solution is not to distrust ourselves but to heal and integrate. For if we give in to distrusting ourselves, abdicating the responsibility we have to the unfolding of our destiny by outsourcing it to external authorities who often have either limited vision or bad intentions, we will sabotage our growth or fail to discover our own ignorance and instead suffer that of others. Sagacious guides and mentors can help too, as long as they don’t end up becoming our crutches or nannies. Our growth is rarely linear, as Nietzsche reminds us:

Like trees we grow—this is hard to understand, as is all life—not in one place only but everywhere, not in one direction but equally upward and outward and inward and downward; our energy is at work simultaneously in the trunk, branches, and roots; we are no longer free to do only one particular thing, to be only one particular thing.8

Evolution happens on different planes, that we navigate with a variety of vehicles. Our physical body is one such vehicle that allows us to navigate our everyday incarnated life. Our soul is another, that allows us to journey between lives. There are a lot of discussions among the various spiritual traditions across the centuries with respect to how many planes and vehicles there are, the distinctions between them, how many we occupy etc. Though how we slice and dice concepts to map reality is important, it is even more important that we are aware that such discussions and distinctions exist, which enable us to distinguish and become aware of the various levels of our being, and that there are paths and practices that allow you to experience the need for coming up with those distinctions in the first place.

A mind-boggling aspect to remember is that development and insight are not uniform across the different planes and vehicles. An old soul can inhabit a baby’s body. An insight unavailable in one vehicle becomes available in another. Moreover, attributes of one plane do not always carry over to another. Believing they do, especially when it comes to that plane that requires the disposal of all vehicles to become available, would simply be a category mistake. I’ll do my best to illustrate the above with an analogy.

When I decide to play a game, I deliberately subject myself to a set of limitations, the rules of the game, to play it. I am aware that life is not confined to those rules and that there are moves that I am capable of performing outside it that are impossible within it. For example, I can walk hundreds of steps while holding a basketball without dribbling it in life. But if I were to do that during a basketball game, it would be a violation of the rules, called traveling.

However, suppose something happened, and I forgot that my life is not confined to the rules of basketball. If I was holding a basketball, I would dribble every time I walked more than a few steps. My focus would be on how to develop my dribbling and other basketball skills required to win, with accumulating points by putting basketballs in baskets being a high priority intimately correlated with success in life. Incarnation is like that. We are born into the game of life, forgetting we come from a place that permits it to commence but is not equivalent to it, just like the everyday world is a “place” from which we can choose to approach a basketball court and start playing a game of basketball but is not equivalent or exhausted by it.

When some people work a job for too long, they forget they are playing to such an extent that their entire identity becomes merged with it. They become doctors, soldiers, golfers, etc. to the point where they say that this is who they are, and if they get fired or are unable to play that role anymore, they often fall into depression not knowing what to do or who to be. This is how deeply we can get immersed in the games we choose to play, while the truth is that we’re all players in the game of life. Learning how to play games well is a more resilient strategy than being a good player in only one of them. The latter may be convenient for our employers but a handicap for us. The skills we learn on the assembly line do not help us assemble our lives or broken marriages after retirement. To be homo sapiens, is not to be homo economicus but homo ludens.

Our development often takes the form of us discovering which games we’re playing, becoming better players, and figuring out which rules we may follow, have to follow, or can ignore, break or create at any given time. The main function of our calling is to serve as a compass to get us to the games we need to play for us to develop. Delusions and defenses can affect our compass into failing to point North properly, while ignorance will prevent us from knowing how to get there even if our compass works. It’s not enough to heal and integrate, we also got to know, be, and do.

The reason why ecstasies are so important is that they are moments in which we exit one or more games and exist in a space outside them, often realizing we’ve been stuck playing mini-games that do not push the grand narrative of our lives forward, just like in the video game Grand Theft Auto we can often engage in side activities that though they are part of the game, they nevertheless neither significantly develop the character we play nor advance the game’s storyline to the next level.

Ecstasies are crucial for our evolution, not only because they represent the completion and transcendence of goals necessary for our growth, but because they provide a new sense of freedom we previously thought impossible and an inkling of a larger game that makes all of this possible. That larger game is the Cosmic Game.

However, there are certain exits/ecstasies in which we exit the very conditions that allow us to play any game. These are the ones in which the separation between player and game, being and becoming, is obliterated. The ones that to describe them I have to use terms that are contradicted by the experience itself, so when I say that we become one with everything, I am presupposing by sheer linguistic usage, that there is a “we” that “becomes one” with “everything”, whereas in the experience itself all these categories make no sense as there is only what is, a space of infinite possibility, boundless freedom, dancing actualities, and ineffable, unfathomable ecstasy, while simultaneously the profoundest realization that this is what is really real, the ultimate awakening from all games. The exit of all exits, the original home and natural state, the Source of Worlds, with no ending or beginning, the ground of all space-time.

It is from that “place” that the Cosmic Game is played, and once we realize the majesty that we partake in, all nihilism is permanently defeated, and Love is recognized as the primordial fecund force that generates worlds, the thread of kinship being unbreakable as the very fabric of reality. It is not a place to get to but the place we’re always ultimately in. To fully recollect it is to have not just the opposite experience to Oppenheimer but one that transcends it. It is to witness genesis and become Syntropy, the creator of worlds, yet abide in the awareness that the division between creator and creation, life and death, being and nothingness, is a necessary limitation (rather than illusion) that allows us to play the Cosmic Game, without preventing the possibility of always remembering where we come from and what we ultimately are. Our fate, an eternal return. We don’t need to learn to love it (amor fati), just remember it is drawn and driven by Love.

We find ourselves in a world we do not fully understand. The sheer changing complexity of everything around and inside us is as fascinating as it is overwhelming. Natural forces, both inner and outer, act on us with what seems like an inescapable necessity, while simultaneously feeling that our will has a certain freedom to shape our destiny.

We do not come to this world alone but are accompanied by others like ourselves, parents and the whole medley of people who make up our contemporaries, who have been alive in the world we’re joining longer than we have. But we soon learn there have been countless others that have left us a legacy and record of innumerable decisions made in the face of experiencing the world, whether in the form we find it today or in another that is long gone. Everyone gives us, by gift, record, artifact, ceremony, tradition, payment or example, their own opinions as to who we are, what world we have found ourselves in and what we’re supposed to do in it.

Yet little time is left to pause and ponder. In school or elsewhere, we are rushed to be taught or told what to do and are supposed to make a living before we really learn how to live and what life is worth living. Then the years pass relentlessly, our prime for most of us provided we reach it, dedicated to a recurring activity that sustains our life and the world around it without justifying its suffering nor explaining its wonder. Past our prime, some of us will be lucky to live our last years in peace, finally catching up with old questions at a time we lack the mental fitness or adequate time to answer them. In the end, we prepare for our last farewell, never to return to that world in the form we learned to live in it.

There is no pause button in life. We constantly find ourselves at crossroads and have to make decisions and face consequences even if we don’t choose.

What are we to make of all this?1

In this series of posts, I’ll answer this question with my current level of understanding.

We’re in a Cosmic Game

Yet we tend to forget we are playing it, identifying with the character we are playing completely. Some of us remember we are not the character we play and can even remember playing other characters. This recall can occur naturally, often seen in children between the ages of three and five2, or due to exceptional circumstances brought about unintentionally (e.g. near-death experiences due to accidents, spontaneous out-of-body experiences accompanied by past life recall3) or intentionally (e.g. in altered states of consciousness brought about by a multitude of modalities, from past life regression via hypnosis4, meditation and breathwork, to the use of entheogens/psychedelics, and trance via dancing or ceremony).

The consilience between different experiences and sources of evidence inevitably leads to the realization that reincarnation is real5 and that we don’t die when our characters do. Instead, we transition to a place in between. The Tibetans called it bardo, the ancient Egyptians, duat. The Tibetan Buddhists wrote about it in Bardo Thodol, the Egyptians in Amduat. I’m going to follow Freddy Silva’s convention and call it the Otherworld6.

Across the world and throughout history, we have used different means to gain knowledge of the Otherworld and labeled this knowledge as occult, which comes

directly from Latin occultus “hidden, concealed, secret,” past participle of occulere “cover over, conceal”7

The meanings associated with the past participle (e.g. “cover over”) presupposes a cover or veil, which relates to idioms like beyond the veil that refer to “a mysterious or hidden place or state, especially the unknown state of existence after death”8.

According to Silva, for the ancient Egyptians, the Otherworld,

unlike the physical world, which is governed by time and decay, this parallel place exists outside of time; it is present and eternal and simultaneous with the physical, like two serpents entwined around a pole…

[It] interpenetrates the world of the living. It is the place from where all physical forms manifest and to where they return. It is an integral component of birth, death, and rebirth. Only through a direct experience of the [Otherworld] can a person fully grasp the operative forces of nature, the knowledge of which was said to transform an individual into an akh—a being radiant with ‘inner spiritual illumination.’9

Ecstasies and Awakenings

People who are unaware of what is beyond the veil, unaware that they’ve played different characters across countless lifetimes, are often metaphorically described as being asleep. In contrast, those who are aware, those with ‘inner spiritual illumination’ are described as being awake or enlightened. Though these terms tend to exist on a spectrum, given there are gradations of awareness and ability, those who have had profound insight and experiences of the Otherworld beyond mere conceptual understanding, know there are thresholds on the spectrum that, once crossed, unmistakably and irrevocably transform those crossing them. Knowing we are playing a character in this lifetime, that we’ve played many characters in past lifetimes, and therefore that we are effectively immortal, is one of them.

I will call the crossings of threshold points ecstasies using the original ancient Greek meaning of the word which was “standing outside oneself”, in addition to the one used by 17th century mystical writers for “a state of rapture that stupefied the body while the soul contemplated divine things.”10

Spiritual traditions give different labels to the thresholds, the methods, rituals, and ceremonies to cross them, the titles for those who cross them, and the abilities (siddhis) and virtues that are exhibited in relation to spiritual advancement in both the everyday world and the Otherworld. For some, like Buddhism, the title for the awakened one (“Buddha”), means something very specific.

However, the more acquainted anyone becomes with different spiritual traditions, the more obvious it is that they often speak of the same places or states, and once you experience such states or get to such places, it becomes easier to understand why two different people would describe them in different ways even though they are the same, just like two different people visiting Japan would give different accounts of the same country.

Moreover, the experience of awakening, is available in multiple dimensions, some of which are behind, not beyond, the veil11. For example, someone who is completely unaware of the history of misogyny12 or of U.S. military and CIA involvement in the foreign affairs of other countries after the Second World War, sometimes orchestrating coup d'etats and political assassinations13, may experience a rather rude awakening when they discover the horror and injustice in ample display in both. So the experience of awakening for me can refer to a drastic shift in awareness, irrespective of whether that shift occurs in reference to knowledge that is behind or beyond the veil.

One crucial reason for rituals, ceremonies, and guides

Crossing the thresholds that lead to ecstasy is not without any risk. Once the bearings you have used to navigate reality are shattered, it can be challenging to reorient oneself and integrate what you have seen and experienced. This is why spiritual traditions around the world have sophisticated rituals and ceremonies, with guides helping you cross and integrate your revelations. From the ancient Egyptians and the Cabeirian, Eleusinian, and Dionysian Mysteries14 of the Ancient Greek world with their hierophants, to the mystical aspects of the main religions (Sufism for Islam, Hesychasm for Christianity, with a plethora of mystical practices in Buddhism, Hinduism, and Taoism in Asia, just to name a few) there are shamanic and occult esoteric traditions pretty much everywhere around the world and throughout history15. They all, in some way, aim to help you cross from the realm of the profane, everyday world, to the realm of the sacred, numinous Otherworld, through a series of preparations, initiations and rites of passage that transform your understanding, experience, and consciousness.

An unprecedented moment in history

For the first time in history, with the aid of modern scholarship, science, technology, and research, in addition to an unprecedented facility to travel around the world, we are not only capable of a truly panoramic view of our magnificent human heritage, but we are able to experientially verify enough of the occult truths claimed in the various traditions, ancient and modern, to finally say with certainty that the people who represent those traditions were not primitive or merely superstitious, unversed in science—it’s just that most of us were uninitiated and couldn’t understand what they were talking about, being too busy arguing their claims did not match the shadows we were used to in our Platonic caves16. That does not mean everything claimed in those traditions is true, any more than everything claimed in the history of science is true. It’s up to us to approach those traditions with humble reverence and a beginner’s mind to discover the jewels of wisdom that only diligent study and practice can reveal. Those jewels can give us unexpected answers and guide us on our journey to understand what we are and what we’re doing here.

Throughout this series, I’ll be drawing from jewels I find and my own mystical experiences to illuminate the Cosmic Game. In the next part of this series, I’ll be diving deeper into ecstasies, traumas, and how they affect our relationship with truth and our calling.

I’ve learned and transformed a lot ever since I wrote and tried to live the Philosophy I had expressed back in 2013. In this post, I’ll summarize some changes and key lessons, in addition to those found in Revealing the Sacred, and trust others will find value in them too.

Moral Innovations & Local Environment Fit

A post I published in 2016, On Ethical Selection, where I developed an analogy between ethical and natural selection, contained a framework that partially shed light on why the Philosophy of 2013 had trouble working. Apparently, moral innovations need as much of a local environment fit as tech innovations need a product-market fit if they are to survive and thrive:

Any behavior instantiating an ethical ideal is always exhibited in a certain context, a local environment. Depending on the reactions of that environment, some ethical behaviors and ideals have a higher probability of being selected, reproduced, and championed, while others are ignored, actively persecuted and go extinct or manage to survive only in unique niches.

A local environment can have a variety of reactions to different behaviors, instantiating different ethical ideals. For example, criticizing slavery today in the environment of the United States garners a different reaction than what it would garner in the same environment before the abolition of slavery.

Moral innovations can sometimes be led to extinction by internal inconsistencies and the reactions of their local environments or, at times, often through sacrifice and the relentlessness of small groups of adherents, persist and eventually change their local environments and become the dominant moralities1.

Obviously, the fit between a local environment and an ethical behavior or ideal says little about the moral worth of either. A just man may find himself in a den of thieves while a criminal in a group of good Samaritans. The same goes for what could be the end result of a certain point in the process. That a just man may eventually become a thief himself in a den of thieves doesn’t count as a proof of superiority for the ethical ideals of the thieves.

The interactions between the “design” (or content) of a behavior instantiating an ethical ideal and its local environment, nevertheless, does affect which will survive, change or become extinct. Understanding these interactions can help us answer questions like:

• Will the inertia of a local environment neutralize an ethical trailblazer that doesn’t fit and lead it to extinction, or would the ethical trailblazer disrupt the inertia of the local environment, causing a phase transition to a new set of behaviors and ethical ideals?

• What are some features I need to be aware of when introducing a moral innovation?

• Would it make sense to stagger the introduction of certain moral innovations in certain local environments?

• In short, how easy or hard would it be for certain parts of the world to accept moral innovation, and if yes, how much and how fast, and if no, why not?2

Moral mutations that diverge too significantly from one's local environment do not confer a perceivable advantage in it and are therefore neither selected nor easily understood. Thus, forms of life that try to instantiate them (e.g. a philosopher attempting to live on the Philosophy of 2013) simply do not have many chances of survival. Their survival is possible but not probable.

To give a concrete example, when Patreon came out I was very excited. Here was a platform that could be set up so that gratitude rather than need could support your work and livelihood. It was a way to test in practice the ideals outlined in my 2013 Philosophy. Yet in reality, only 2% of all creators on Patreon earn more than the federal minimum wage through the site, according to public earnings data—and I wasn’t one of them—and that number drops to 0.8% if we assume a $15 minimum wage instead of $7.253. Though I’m sure I did a number of things wrong when I launched my Patreon (hence why I often think of reusing it in some way), not to mention that competition is fierce with a lot of quality content out there, those numbers remain quite sobering.

The situation is not different for creators using YouTube. Using numbers from a study4 by professor Mathias Bärtl from Offenburg University of Applied Sciences, what is revealed is that “over 96.5% of YouTube creators aren’t making a full-time minimum income from advertising revenue on YouTube.”5

There are other factors to consider. For example:

…the time it takes for creators to qualify for YouTube’s partner program, which involves earning more than 4,000 valid public watch hours in the past 12 months and more than 1,000 subscribers. For YouTuber Cathrin Manning, it took nearly two years to accumulate these results. After monetizing, it can still take time for a video to reach $50 in earnings. Even at that rate, creators would still need to make 491 videos per year to reach $24,544 in earnings from advertising revenue. If a creator considers cash flow, that $50 needs to come in within a short amount of time.6

Moreover, creators have to be careful lest their political views deem them not “advertiser friendly” and thereby see their videos demonetized7 or have their views censored, something Hong Kong creators, among others, discovered during the recent pandemic8.

At this point, it is important to note, that:

This is not exclusively a YouTube problem: Spotify announced in February that only 7,500 creators out of 8 million got paid $100,000 from the platform in 2020. That’s 0.09% — and that number was up 79% from the year before.9

All the above constitute interesting data points to speculate on with respect to our digital “local environment” and what kind of agents and moral outlooks it selects.

• Is it really the case that the vast majority of content creators produce content not worthy of decent compensation or do we just live in a culture that doesn’t sufficiently reward creators?

• Does the architecture of our tech platforms fail to equitably compensate creators for the value their content provides?

• Has the culture that Big Tech established, where services and content are often free to the end user, in exchange for capturing and selling user data to advertisers and third parties, negatively affects small and independent creators that don’t use that business model and have neither the willingness to engage in it, nor the technical expertise or big audiences necessary for it to work?

• Can a creator who produces content outside the Overton window, make a living in today’s online environment, and what are the risks associated with doing so?

Reflecting on such considerations made me add more nuance and realism to my current philosophy compared to the one I held in 2013. How would I honor what I loved if the way I had chosen to do it didn’t offer the best chances of doing it sustainably?

Loving the Message can be Why you Charge for it

In the quote from On Ethical Selection earlier, I mentioned that, other than the fit between a moral innovation (e.g. “All my works for free, pay what you want if you think their valuable” that I had in my 2013 Philosophy) and its local environment (e.g. an online culture where free content is the norm, and money is mostly made by tech platforms through ads that leverage big datasets rather than individual creators), another factor that affects the survival of moral innovations are internal inconsistencies—and it is one, in hindsight, glaring inconsistency, rather than any fit between my moral innovation and its local environment, that dealt the deathblow to a certain mindset in my 2013 Philosophy.

The origin of the inconsistency can be traced in this metaphor found there:

I find it ironic that a lot of people who claim they have a message to spread and want to help others, life-coaches, motivational speakers, self-help gurus etc. nevertheless make money a pre-condition for accessing that message. A monetary exchange by its very nature excludes those who have no money to exchange. While making money is not necessarily a bad thing, when someone puts money as the necessary condition for receiving their message, they implicitly signify that it is less important than the money they require in order to give it, for if you have none, you won’t be getting the message. Irrespective of what they may say in theory, in practice they are saying that getting your money is more important than delivering their message. This is a fundamental distinction between the professional and amateur mindset. Between the sophist and the philosopher. Between doing things for the sake of the things themselves rather than as a means to something else. Between doing something in the spirit of love and doing something for money. In light of this line of reasoning and in accordance to my ideals, there is no monetary requirement to enjoy access to my works.10

There are a few considerations that are missing from the metaphor above. Firstly, a message doesn’t exist in isolation and wasn’t created out of thin air. In my case, it literally took decades of personal effort and a significant amount of resources for its quality to get to the point it enjoys today. The schools, colleges, and universities in which I was educated and got my degrees in philosophy required a significant amount of funds. The same goes for my upbringing and the extraordinary experiences I’ve had the luck, audacity, and privilege to enjoy and learn from. Thus, the preconditions for the generation of these messages cost a lot.

Secondly, there is no message without a messenger. There is a living breathing being that discovers, channels, generates, and develops the message and/or delivers it. It, too, needs resources to live and carry out the process that leads to the discovery, generation, development, and successful transmission of the message. If we were to also consider the material manifestation or implementation of the message with whatever equipment, services, spaces, organizations, events, practices, and personnel it may require, then the costs, of all kinds, rise even higher. 

So, someone putting money as a necessary precondition for receiving their message may not be doing it because they believe that “getting your money is more important than delivering their message” but exactly because they believe that the message is too important for it to stop being generated and/or delivered due to lack of resources and/or bad financial planning. It may be the very love of the message that motivates them to ask for the resources that will keep it being generated, developed, and/or circulated.

The objection raised would be valid if the resources for that process were firmly secured but the individual or organization, instead of redeploying them on the mission relating to the message, preferred to unreasonably accumulate them for consistently selfish extravagant expenditures while doing little to leverage them to distribute the message to those who needed it but couldn't afford it.

Any individual or organization that requires money to deliver its message does not necessarily believe that “getting your money is more important than delivering their message”. Nor does it mean that they don’t do things “in the spirit of love” and “for the sake of the things themselves”. For it is not the monetary requirement, on its own, that determines whether something is done out of love. In fact, as we’ve established, there can be times when the monetary requirement is there precisely out of love for the message, as it ensures the resources for its generation, propagation, and implementation. 

In short, the requirements of a misguided moral purity I believed were necessary to honor my love for wisdom were not only unnecessary but sabotaged the very preconditions of that love being instantiated and its ability to nurture children. 

So I decided to change that. As I wrote in the About page of my philosophical guidance website:

After doing a variety of jobs to support my philosophical path and frequently sharing my learnings freely with those I’ve been blessed to meet along the way either in person or in writing, I decided it is now the time for the path itself to support the one walking it, by sharing what I’ve learned & still learning while using the funds provided by those who value my gifts, work, and service, to keep walking, learning, sharing, creating, and loving, in service to the benefit & evolution of all beings.

Which also explains why Numinous Quest, while having many posts that will be free for everyone, will have others available only for people whose level of support has transitioned to a paid subscription, allowing me to keep creating, discovering, developing, and sharing my message. Without some people paying, making free content is unsustainable and internally inconsistent with my latest realizations. In fact, the more people choose paid subscriptions, the easier it becomes to make more of my content free—not the other way around.

Revealing the Process

Throughout most of my life, I’ve been quite private and solitary about my philosophical practice despite it being a major part of my life. Others would only see some polished fragments (many of which are in my archives) that were the result of philosophical activity but not the activity itself. Not even my immediate family knows exactly what it is that I’ve been doing, and yet, after all “these years of temptation and experiment”11 I’ve come to realize that:

“...what has happened to me…must happen to everyone in whom a task wants to become incarnate and “come into the world”. The secret force and necessity of this task rules among and in the individual facets of our destiny like an unconscious pregnancy — long before we have caught sight of this task itself or know its name. Our vocation commands and disposes of us even when we do not yet know it; it is the future that regulates our today…it is only now, at the midday of our life, that we understand the preparations, bypaths, experiments, temptations, disguises the problem had need of before it was allowed to rise up before us.”12

It is only now, after four decades in this lifetime, that a “mature freedom of spirit which is equally self-mastery and discipline of the heart and permits access to many and contradictory modes of thought”13 has finally led,

“to that inner spaciousness and indulgence of superabundance which excludes the danger that the spirit may even on its own road perhaps lose itself and become infatuated and remain intoxicated in some corner or other; to that superfluity of formative, curative, moulding and restorative forces which is precisely the sign of great health, that superfluity which grants to the free spirit the dangerous privilege of living experimentally and of being allowed to offer itself to adventure”14

It is now that I finally feel ready to reveal more of my philosophical process and lead others through the rites of passage philosophical adventures require. 

Even those who are not meant to travel with me, may derive some benefit from the captain’s logs recorded during my life’s quest. That’s another reason why I started Numinous Quest; to help fellow travelers with lessons learned, experiments attempted, dead ends reached, and challenges overcome, while generating resources to keep on traveling and logging my way out of Plato’s Cave. One more thread leading out of the labyrinth and back to the love that is waiting for us all.

Selves are the mirrors of God/Source. A human looking in the mirror is a mirror looking at itself. When you quiet the chattering mind, the mirror is dissolved. With the mirror gone, what remains is God/Source. With only God/Source remaining, even the sentence “I am God/Source” becomes nonsensical, since the division of an “I” that “is” something, the division of the world into subjects with properties, is revealed to be a category mistake of the world of mirrors.

The word idolatry, is the worship of idols. Any worship that creates any distinction is a form of idolatry. The only way to not be idolatrous is to worship God/Source, but given worship is etymologically the act of finding worth, and given worth presupposes a distinction between worthy/worthless, worship itself belongs to the world of mirrors1. To abide in the sacred is not to worship it, but to be it. Only those who have identified with the mirror worship. But in doing so they have forgotten who they are.

All entities that demand our worship are idols, because all entities are idols. The ego is an idol too. But in killing God/Source, it makes for a poor replacement for organizing society, since it doesn’t fulfill Durkheim’s advice:

“What is moral is everything that is a source of solidarity, everything that forces man to…regulate his actions by something other than…his own egoism.”2
– Emile Durkheim

Hence why Solzhenitsyn’s insight depicted is astute.

When we remember we are not the mirrors but the reflection of “something other”, then we can regulate ourselves properly.

All societies that don’t recognize the sacred inevitably sail to some kind of Gulag Archipelago.

Whether their idols are “efficiency”, “capitalism” and “progress”, or the false gods of any major religion that has made idols out of the mystical experiences of their founders.

The deepest experience of the sacred unfailingly results in unconditional love, since the veil of separation is lifted, and the majesty of all that is, is abided in. It does not create inflation, for in the absence of self there is nothing to be inflated, it does not create pride, since there is no self to look down on those who did not have the mystical experience. It is unconditional, for it is beyond all conditions, and it is love because that is the only thing that is real. The Primordial Eros of Parmenides3 is reality itself, and it’s heartbeat is Love.

There is a paradoxical yet absolutely profound experience in which you are the creator and creation of everything at the same time, with the whole distinction being rendered meaningless by the reality of your experience being both, with any notion of agency and separation being superseded.

I believe the experience of the divine is not one in which you feel you are a god, inflated with delusions of grandeur. But one in which the distinction between techne and physis is obliterated in a unity that is impossible to describe without speaking lies, for language is possible only with the very fundamental divisions you are trying to point out as artificial to the ultimate nature of reality.

This is why “the Tao one can speak of is not the true Tao” (Lao Tzu, in Tao Te Ching) and maybe why “What we cannot speak about we must pass over in silence” (Wittgenstein, in the last sentence of his Tractatus).

Silence, at least, does not falsify the experience, but it doesn't express it either—art does.

Art is the activity by which the ineffable becomes manifest, and the only art related to speech that can express the ineffable is the one that breaks its rules: poetry. This is why poets will always be superior at expressing truth than philosophers1, and why Plato was right in his view of artists in his early dialogue Ion.

But which poets can express the ineffable? Only those who are philosophical (e.g. Rumi). Those who are not, are just playing with shadows. Their poetry may be pleasant, but it is not profound.

“Someday, after we have mastered the winds, the waves, the tides and gravity, we shall harness for God the energies of love. Then, for the second time in the history of the world, man will have discovered fire.”1

— Pierre Teilhard de Chardin

Though I would add it's less about harnessing them and more about dancing with them, till we realize we are the dance rather than the dancers. There is a certain hubris entailed in the idea that Love is something that needs to be “mastered” that belongs to an age that I feel we're on our way to surpassing.

As I wrote elsewhere it is more about surrendering than it is about mastering, though that surrender is not a submission but a recognition of an identity that in its realization transcends duality. In other words, we become love for what we surrender is the illusion that we are anything but.

The withholding of knowledge is not always indicative of vice. In the works of Gillette and Moore, when discussing the two shadow sides of the Magician archetype, you have the “Detached Manipulator” on the active pole and the “Denying Innocent One” on the passive pole1.

“Behind the propaganda ministries, the controlled press briefings, the censored news, and the artificially orchestrated political rallies lies the face of the Magician as Manipulator.

The active pole of the Shadow Magician is, in a special sense, a “power Shadow.” A man under this Shadow doesn’t guide others, as a Magician does; he directs them in ways they cannot see. His interest is not in initiating others by graduated degrees—degrees that they can integrate and handle—into better, happier, and more fulfilled lives. Rather, the Manipulator maneuvers people by withholding from them information they may need for their own well-being. He charges heavily for the little information he does give, which is usually just enough to demonstrate his superiority and his great learning. The Shadow Magician is not only detached, he is also cruel.”2

When someone embodying the Magician archetype is purposely/actively withholding information for purposes like the ones described above, then we tend to easily recognize this as wicked.

However, it is often less recognized that someone who denies the responsibility that comes with knowing something and disseminates it without discernment, can also cause harm and should also be recognized as a possible expression of the passive shadow side of the Magician archetype. When we omit extra information that would have caused harm without any benefit if it had been communicated, we are exhibiting virtue, not vice. We are, however, ultimately liable for our judgment, just like we are for declining to arrive at one, and it’s not always clear which course of action produces the best consequences.

This is actually why Plato disliked written works, even though he wrote some, because the written material cannot dynamically adjust to the reader, and may either communicate too much or too little.

The mature expression of the Magician archetype is the one that calibrates the dissemination of knowledge according to the people and situations at hand for the benefit of all.

Love does not conquer all. We surrender to love because it is all. Peace is the realization that the need to get somewhere, be something, is all based on ignorance of our true nature. It does not mean that all activity ceases, it means you re-orient yourself to the realization that “you” are both the ground of the activity and the activity itself, you are both the witness and what is being witnessed.

We are already there. All of us. There is no us. That is the mind-boggling step, what the mind can’t grasp but the heart can feel. To realize there is no “you”, “us”, “others”, there is no “there” or “now”.

Whatever needs conquering presupposes an opposition, whereas love is what is beyond oppositions and rejoices in their dance. The reason why love is unconditional is because it is beyond duality. The last step of Eros is to be Love beyond the opposition (negative/positive or masculine/feminine or any polarities) that motivated its ascent.

We all experience glimpses of it, but then forget. To be awake is to live in a state of αλήθεια (the word for truth in Greek, etymologically related to that which is not forgotten or hidden), to follow Eros all the way to Cosmic Love (the Neo-Platonic “One”) and once you do, all is love, for love is all there is.

No humans, no aliens, no spirits, no gods. But an ecstatic dance of love giving birth and death, to all forms, to gods, spirits, aliens, humans, animals and the whole circus of existence, in equal measure, like a child playing.

This is why the Child is the last metamorphosis in Nietzsche. This is why Jesus said that unless we change and become like little children, we will never enter the kingdom of heaven. The kingdom of heaven is love, and you cannot conquer it, you can only surrender to it. You cannot “get there” because it is not “somewhere”, it is a state of being. Once you realize it with your whole soul, all karma is extinguished, nirvana = samsara, everything is redeemed, and you laugh like a child at the cosmic joke you were not getting even though it was everywhere, all the time, staring at you, playing with you, teasing you.

The kingdom of heaven is within us. This world will change as we dwell and act from love1. All those “serious” people in suits and positions of power, are traumatized children, building kingdoms to protect themselves from the absence of love and to conquer the only place you need to surrender to get to.

Today I reveal an expression of an archetype dear to my soul: that of the lover. Over the past months I've been working on the new home for my love letters and as of now it is finally complete and live.

The Intention & Invitation

My intention in making these letters available to the public is part of my wider mission of revealing, expressing, and supporting the three gates that take you beyond the veil: the Sacred, Erotic, and Aesthetic. Letters to the One, is focused more on the Erotic.

The Erotic, especially nowadays, has come to be associated with profane sexuality. Yet it was not always so. In antiquity, it was associated with a kind of divine madness that, followed wisely, could lead to the transcendental, as Plato’s Symposium, the West’s oldest philosophical treatise on Eros, makes clear. In short, Eros was always about sacred sexuality, its association with profane sexuality being a form of decadence acquired over time.

All the countless poets, musicians, and artists over the centuries did not create all these works inspired by the future anticipation of the pleasures involved in the mutual rubbing of genitals but because they felt there was something deeper calling them beyond themselves that they needed to voice or transmute into art for it to serve as a message and beacon of the divine and the transcendental.

It is that tradition that I am part of and inviting you to participate in, becoming more open to the authentic erotic dimension in your lives through reading examples in mine. These letters being a gentle initiation and glimpse into the trials and tribulations that the soul goes through in its attempt to sail and decipher the mysteries of Eros, whether during an instance of being possessed by it or through the tragic predicament of being untouched by its grace, and only visible through the heart of another that is trying to share it.

In closing, I want to acknowledge that none of these letters would have been produced had it not been for the muses that inspired them. That’s why they are mentioned first in my acknowledgments, and will have my eternal gratitude, for inspiring Eros to shoot the arrow that I used for a quill.

You now can have access to my records of erotic madness. I hope they open your heart as much as I had to open mine to write them.

Visit Letters to the One

I include the text I wrote as an introduction to the project on its homepage below for further context:

“Our greatest blessings come to us by way of madness” says Socrates in Plato’s Phaedrus. But as Dodds reminds us in the book The Greeks and the Irrational: “the father of Western rationalism is not represented as maintaining the general proposition that it is better to be mad than sane, sick, or sound. He qualifies his paradox with the words “provided the madness is given by divine gift”. For Plato there are four kinds of divine madness: 

1. Prophetic madness (whose patron god is Apollo)
2. Telestic or Ritual madness (whose patron god is Dionysus)
3. Poetic madness (inspired by the Muses)
4. Erotic madness (inspired by Aphrodite and Eros)

The letters I am making available are my attempts to record what came through in moments of erotic madness and philosophical reflections upon that madness, times of being its recipient without sharing it, its different phases of death and rebirth, and the challenge to be touched by it or love in its absence. They are examples of what Roland Barthes called the lover’s discourse. They are expressions of gratitude, devotion, and desire to follow the ascent of Eros from the visceral to the transcendental, or vice versa, that some unique people in my life have inspired me to do, with a little bit of poetic license and editing for literary & privacy considerations.

Dodds, in the work already mentioned, maintains that “Eros supplies the dynamic impulse which drives the soul forward in its quest of a satisfaction transcending earthly experience.” The higher we ascend in our pursuit of Eros, the more we realize that Eros was never merely leading us to our loved one, but to the One itself through our beloveds. But what is the One, you may ask? It is a key notion introduced by the Neoplatonic philosopher Plotinus; as the philosopher Edward Moore explains:

“The “concept” of the One is not, properly speaking, a concept at all, since it is never explicitly defined by Plotinus, yet it is nevertheless the foundation and grandest expression of his philosophy. Plotinus does make it clear that no words can do justice to the power of the One; even the name, “the One,” is inadequate, for naming already implies discursive knowledge, and since discursive knowledge divides or separates its objects in order to make them intelligible, the One cannot be known through the process of discursive reasoning (Ennead VI.9.4). Knowledge of the One is achieved through the experience of its “power” (dunamis) and its nature, which is to provide a “foundation” (arkhe) and location (topos) for all existents (VI.9.6). The “power” of the One is not a power in the sense of physical or even mental action; the power of the One, as Plotinus speaks of it, is to be understood as the only adequate description of the “manifestation” of a supreme principle that, by its very nature, transcends all predication and discursive understanding.” – from Edward Moore, “Plotinus” at the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy.

It is to that place that I believe all love letters are ultimately addressed. When possessed by erotic madness, you become a receptacle of grace, and what you are recording on your love letter, is ultimately a love letter to the universe, as manifested in the form of your beloved. If you respect that grace, and the vessels we are for it, our love letters become a celebration of the cosmic attraction we enjoy and often deliciously tormented by.

For the primary gift of grace through the people we feel attracted to is the awakening of our erotic desire, “the instant revelation that this is what matters…without an argument or evidence but with an absolute certainty beyond cogito ergo sum, Eros arrives hidden in mortal vessels, an ancient god protecting mere humans from its original form so as not to drive them to irreversible madness” as I write in one panegyric you will find in these letters.

Just because we are made aware of what is important through erotic grace manifested in the human form, that in itself, does not give us the right to possess it nor the ability to do so, as love is only gifted, never taken. What makes one a lover is being grateful for desire over and above whether you are going to taste its object. That is why lovers always love the people who spur them to love, more than the return of their affections. You love the tree even if the fruit is forbidden, and you never shame or blame trees whose fruits you are not allowed to taste. For their gift was in making you feel desire, and desire is life dancing inside you, tempting you to live. That should be enough reason for gratitude instead of blaming and shaming those who helped you desire something they may not have been inclined to share with you. Be responsible for your own emotions, even if others had a role in arousing them. Just because they aroused them does not necessarily make them responsible for satisfying them. The smell of a beautiful meal does not obligate the cook to feed those who love its smell. You have to be invited to the feast…

What these letters have been are attempts to be worthy of an invitation, celebrations of the feast, and a deep reverence of the force that moves us to it and the source from which it comes. 

It is for that reason that I’ve often spent countless hours even for a single sentence or phrase in a love letter. Even when I know I may never receive a response. For these letters are but a prayer to Love, expressed with deep gratitude to the often unaware hierophants through which it becomes manifest. It is for that reason that they can no longer be kept only for the eyes for which they were intended. I have of course hidden or changed all the personal details that are not conducive to reveal the universal message the world would do well to remember: that Love is the Way to the One. I could no longer keep these prayers in the hands of the few when they are in so much need by the hearts of the many. I hope they open your heart as much as I had to open mine to write them.

But there are two more reasons why I decided to publish these letters. The first is the selfless support of my dear friend Michael Gibson who I will be forever grateful for. This project would have not happened without his help and encouragement. The second goes back a few years ago, when I met the extraordinary Lydia Laurenson, author of many articles and books on sexuality and culture. Through our long conversations and preliminary research, it became clear that there has never been, in the history of humanity, a School for Love & the Erotic Arts. Sure, there are and have been individual teachers and coaches, that may have taught about different specific aspects related to Love and the Erotic Arts, and often you’ll find some sub-section of a major religion or philosophy that may have dedicated itself to that topic, but usually it sits within a context of something else and more often than not, from a single particular perspective. The closest attempts are efforts by collections of coaches and modern tantrikas that sometimes get together and form retreats, communities, and organizations that teach on intimacy, love, and sexuality. But to my knowledge I haven’t found a fully-fledged, endlessly cited, campus enabled, universally acknowledged and respected School for Love & the Erotic Arts. In other words, there is nothing like an Oxford, Cambridge, Harvard, or Stanford fully dedicated to Love and the Erotic Arts out there – and I find that utterly shocking and want to do something about it. 

But who am I to initiate such a venture? What credentials and authority do I have to even dare suggest it? 

Anybody can write academic essays on love. Just collect the bibliography, extract patterns and common themes, add a sliver of insight, and put them on paper. 

But writing about love is not the same as living it. Writing about martial arts doesn’t make you a warrior, anymore than a military historian is necessarily a good general. 

It is only in living with the live fire of love that gives you the right to speak with authority on the matter. Only by loving and being loved, can you speak or teach about it, no matter how small or big your experience is, it has to be there as a lived experience and not as a purely abstract mental exercise, no matter how sophisticated. 

The only proof that I have loved and can easily share are these letters. They are my erotic credentials, they are the logs of my heart that other veterans of love can vouch and verify for their veracity or incompleteness.

Lydia and I were thinking of starting this School for Love & the Erotic Arts together, but her destiny called her to start her own publication, The New Modality, which I highly recommend, and that left with me with an ally but without a co-founder.

So these letters, other than a testament to my love life, are also a beacon, to call in all the masters of love and the erotic arts who I know exist all over the world, to join me in creating the world’s finest School for Love & the Erotic Arts. The world never needed it more.

I cannot do this alone and nor can it be done alone. The right people have to come together if we are to make this offering to the world and facilitate ascension, because in case you don’t know it already, the only way to it is through Love. Lesser motivations simply can’t make it past certain densities. So if this resonates, please read my soul, ask Source, and reach out!

The past few years have been a series of unprecedented astonishments. Throughout my academic education as a philosopher I had little connection to the sacred. The closest I got were moments of awe in encountering the majesty of nature, bouts of the divine madness of erotic love, and the glories of high art that at times use the five senses to take you beyond them.

You see, the world had been disenchanted1, the rainbow had been unwoven2, and God had died3. Or so we were told.

But to paraphrase Tyson, everybody has an argument against the divine until they get punched into outer space by a mystical experience either through meditative techniques or heroic doses of entheogens. Once you have seen beyond the veil, you cannot forget, because what you just went through was literally the opposite of forgetfulness, it was an instance of recollection, what Plato calls anamnesis, a recovery of wisdom that felt more real than anything you could have experienced with your five senses. For a few precious moments, though during the experience it felt like you were looking at the world from the perspective of the eternal (sub specie aeternitatis), the veil of appearance was lifted, the cave of darkness exited, and the sun of consciousness realized. Gradually, the obscure and at times fantastical descriptions of mystics the world over started making more sense, for the lived experience of a true mystery revealed arguments to be mere shadows on the walls of ignorance.

Once you experience the numinous and return from the sacred to the profane, you become an amphibian according to Plotinus, living two lives4, one here, and one there, and you look for what connects the one to the other, till they become one and the same (that’s when samsara becomes nirvana if you want to use a Buddhist terminology). But in that tension, neither you nor the world remains the same. You finally understand what it means to be in the world but not of this world. If you are so called, you gradually become a psychopomp, guiding others from one plane to another, or a hierophant, revealing the sacred to those willing, ready, and capable of receiving and integrating it.

It is this transformation of consciousness, this initiation into the mysteries of the cosmos with our whole being, that brings about the total overcoming of nihilism and the transvaluation of values that Nietzsche was looking for.

I stress with our whole being because it is more common for our civilizations, when they don’t fully traumatize humans into unconscious servile automatons seeking thrills, distractions or numbness, to produce people with hypertrophy in only a single part of their being. Brilliant experts in one domain but lost dullards of life in general. In contrast, when your whole being is involved in a process of evolution and transcendence, the scope of your identity changes and the circle of your concern widens.

It is the opposite of narcissism: The self is not inflated to become the world, othering and devaluing anything that is not similar to it, an exercise in futility, solipsism, and hubris, but deflated to let it in, and change one from within.

In such a process, it is not your sense of entitlement that grows but your feeling of compassion & care for all entities in which your new identity now recognizes a universal kinship while being able to revel in each unique expression of that identity.

Like realizing we all are made of and can play with the same individual musical notes, yet are still able to marvel and be moved by the individual combinations that make up wonderful and diverse melodies, so that every musician from every genre can appreciate one another and champion the glory of music and actively support and defend the preconditions that make it possible, while ascribing more or less value to different beings becoming as absurd as claiming the white keys are more important than the black keys in the piano.

The challenges we face are a direct consequence of our collective level of consciousness and development that then becomes instantiated in our institutions, businesses, governments, technologies, and laws. If we are to secure universal flourishing, and prevent our own material extinction and future generations from incarnating on a beautiful planet, we need to orchestrate awakenings at scale while respecting where everyone is in their own individual journey. In short, the only thing worth scaling is enlightenment. But in contrast to the Age of Enlightenment between the 17th and the 18th centuries, the Enlightenment of the 21st has to be based on the acknowledgment of the sacred5, the recognition of our multidimensionality & interconnectedness, and the obligations we have to one another & the planet we’re part of.

That means, the acknowledgment and integration of occult truths (e.g. magic is real6 and reincarnation occurs7), the acknowledgment, healing, and regeneration of personal, collective, and environmental8 traumas, and the reclaiming of the many rites and rituals for personal and collective mystical ecstasy and integration, found in modern movements and indigenous world traditions.

The technologies we have will hasten our destruction if we don’t heal and develop the souls that guide them. Once souls are healed and supported in their trajectory of evolution, the technologies we have will be put to good use and amplify our flourishing rather than accelerate our extinction.

This is the challenge of our generation. It is not to reclaim some conceited greatness acquired by conquest and maintained by injustice, but to remember who we are, so we can become all we can be. To learn what love is, how to give it and receive it, how to be it, accept its grace and work its wonders, and embody its expression towards one another and the world at large.

We live in a cosmic game of unfathomable beauty and complexity. It is more beautiful when everyone knows how to jam, so let us help one another to learn how to play and dance in its splendor.

Our work is not done, till no one has to work, yet everything is working better than ever, until Burning Man becomes Tending Man and can happen regeneratively all year everywhere for everyone rather than once a year for some in the desert. Till Gaia becomes our temple, and Ascension becomes our Burn.

That is the ultimate mission of Operation Numinous9. The Numinous Quest is a chronicle of its unfolding. Support the mission by becoming a subscriber.

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Introduction

In a previous post entitled The Art of Enquiry I had divided enquiry into six dimensions with the vertical dimension being contrasted with the horizontal one:

“The horizontal dimension has to do with how fast you progress in getting to the logical conclusion of a question within a fixed framework of presuppositions. The vertical dimension has to do with how aware you are of the factors that determine the way you think. To give a more concrete example think of a car. The more you step on the gas the faster it goes. That’s horizontal progression. The vertical dimension would be being aware of how the engine makes such a motion possible.”

This post is an exploration of the vertical dimension, specifically focusing on how certain conceptual presuppositions and methods affect the way we think.
Just as most of us are not aware of all the complex bio-chemical processes that are involved in thinking the same goes for all the conceptual presuppositions that determine the way we think. In other words, our thinking is guided by certain unconscious beliefs about the world. Fortunately, it is possible to access those beliefs and change them.

To use a computer metaphor (and one should not forget it’s only a metaphor, and not necessarily a good one), if our brain, the grey matter, the physical stuff that is in our skull is thought of as the “hardware”, then our conceptual framework is its software. Just as software has evolved over the years, so have our conceptual frameworks. Just as most people don’t use the full capabilities of their computers, and forget to upgrade their operating system, the same goes for our conceptual framework. People do not upgrade because they think they don’t need to. Thus they are unaware of the possibilities that are available to them or the ways their outdated system sabotages their thinking.

The Conceptual Bedrock of your Mind: Epistemology and Metaphysics

As we grow up in life we come to certain conclusions as to what we can know and how we go about knowing it. What exists in the world and how it exists is what metaphysics is mainly about and how we know what exists in the world and what this knowledge is makes up epistemology.

All our judgments about the world presuppose these two frameworks. In fact, any judgment is impossible without them. The better your metaphysics and epistemology the better the quality of your judgments.

Remember what we said earlier? That people don’t upgrade because they can do just fine with earlier versions of their conceptual software?
Well that might have been true for thousands of years when humans had to satisfy very basic needs relating to survival and reproduction. However, the more complex our methods for surviving and living become, the more our conceptual frameworks struggle to evolve to accommodate the increasing complexity. They were suited for a different environment, and when we try to use them to do something else, they falter.
It is like trying to use a hammer to measure the temperature. It’s not made for it. But just because you can’t measure the temperature with a hammer that doesn’t mean that temperature does not exist or that it cannot be known. Amusing as this example may be, this sometimes is a good analogy for the way we try to make sense of the world.

Correspondence: The Hammer that thinks Temperature does not exist

We have a wonderful method for knowing that has served us well for countless years. It’s called correspondence. You ask John where your friend Sara is. John tells you that he believes that Sara is behind the door. You look behind the door and you find Sara.
What did just happen?

You found a way to see whether John was telling the truth. You used your senses and when you saw Sara behind the door, you found out that John’s belief corresponded with reality. If you hadn’t found Sara behind the door you would have thought that either John lied to you or that simply John’s belief just didn’t correspond to reality, that it was untrue.

We have the remarkable ability to believe things that may not correspond to reality. Given people are aware of this, some use lies to their advantage, and in response we have figured out ways to protect ourselves from liars. One such way is correspondence.
In most of our everyday tasks, correspondence is invaluable. It works well.

So do our senses. They get us around and unless we tamper with them they will do the job well. With them we determine whether we should take our umbrella with us today, whether our coffee needs more sugar, and whether our beloved is home from work.
And yet even though they can tell us whether she is home from work they cannot tell us whether she’s in love.

And if we were to sit down with our beloved and read her a poem, and we disagreed on whether the poem was beautiful, correspondence would not be able to help us find the beauty behind the door, like we found Sara.

So some people opt to declare beauty, love, right and wrong as non-existent and therefore unknowable because they cannot find the door let alone what’s behind it.
They are like the persons with the hammer who declare that temperature is non-existent and impossible to measure because it cannot be done with a hammer.

Puzzling as this may seem, this is a belief widely held today. Some people believe that there is no right and wrong, beautiful and ugly. These things exist only in our heads. And because they exist only in our heads they cannot be true or false, and we can choose to ascribe them wherever we want. They are, as people say “subjective”.

Whereas Sara behind the door is not just in our heads. She is behind the door too.
How do we solve this problem? Correspondence obviously cannot help us. Because beauty is not a “thing”. And correspondence is only good for things: stuff, stones, tables, chairs, bodies and corpses. For beauty, rightness and the soul you need something else. Something more delicate than a hammer.

The Soul: Something delicate

Before I continue, I’d like to add a brief remark for contemporary readers: Do not be estranged by my use of the word “soul”. I am not presupposing abstract “substances” in other-worldly realms. Originally, I was thinking to use the word “mind” instead of “soul”, but then my heart intervened. The word “mind” has been too much associated with our thoughts and less with our emotions. Yet our emotions are as important in correct judgment as our thoughts. As Dylan Evans in his book Emotion: The Science of Sentiment reminds us, people who lose emotional capacities because of brain damage do not become more rational but less rational: they can make disastrous choices as to who to trust or take an extraordinary amount of time to decide among different options1.

To speak in the vernacular, our mind is good at seeing all the options but our heart is better at knowing which one is worth choosing. I only chose the word “soul” because it seems to entail both the intellectual and the affective part our judgment. For the mind is sharp, but without the heart, it has no finesse (alluding to Pascal’s esprit de finesse). To paraphrase Kant, the mind without the heart is empty but the heart without the mind is blind. The soul that balances those spheres is on its way to wisdom.

Other people cannot see what is in our soul. But they can see what is in the physical world. That is the big advantage of correspondence, that other people can know one side of the equation (the world of things) and can test whether the other (our beliefs) is true even though they do not have direct access to it.

But what happens with right and wrong? Beauty and Ugliness? Now we all recognize that these things are not “things”. They do not have physical characteristics. Yet we can attribute them to physical things. We call some paintings beautiful. What is going on?
The truth is that we do not use just one way of getting to truth. In fact, we do not behave as if there are only things in this world. And I do not need some complex argument to prove this. We only need to direct our attention to something we are aware of every day and undeniably exists: desires.

Desires are not things. Though they might have physical preconditions (e.g. a living body) they do not have physical characteristics. Yet no one would claim they do not exist. Why not? Other people cannot see them2. Other people cannot hear them, smell them, taste them. So why don’t they send them to the realm of non-existence like some decided to do with beauty and rightness? Because everybody feels them. They see them “from the inside”.

Yet in recognizing this, we just enriched our epistemology and metaphysics. For now we have a new way of knowing and something new to know. Correspondence isn’t that useful in detecting desire. If I were to tell you that Sara desired John, there would be no door that you could open that would reveal this to you – unless you opened the door of Sara’s heart, and that cannot be done with the senses3. A hammer might break one’s heart but it will never reveal its secrets.

So how do you unlock the door to Sara’s heart? The one word answer is: interpretation.

Interpretation versus Correspondence, a New Realm, and the Role of Poetry

We are not just slates that record impressions from the physical world. We feel. Our lives are a complex mosaic of feelings intertwined with impressions in myriad ways, and in trying to express this mosaic we invented a way: poetry.

Poetry exists because we are more than we can say. For those who first wrote it, it wasn’t a luxury, but a necessity. They did not choose to be poets, they felt differently, and language in its literal sense was too poor to express what they felt. So they broke the rules and combined words in uncustomary ways. Sometimes they were seen as liars, distorting reality with their words (see Plato on this). But other times their art revealed truths that resonated so deeply within the souls of men, that they were seen as messengers of the gods or people endowed with the ability to directly apprehend the truth (ironically, the latter position also belongs to Plato. See his dialogue Ion).

You do not verify a poem. You feel it. You interpret it. To believe that an interpretation is true if it corresponds to the “meaning” of the poem is to carry over correspondence from the realm of things to that of the sentiments without being aware of the difference in context.

That does not mean that any interpretation is as good as any other. It only means you need to use a different way to discern which interpretations are better and which are worse. But let us go back to desire.

Where is it? If you were to ask that question, you immediately presuppose that it exists within space. But does it? If you open your heart will you find it there? No. You will just find muscle, blood, veins and arteries.

You see, when poetry becomes vernacular, we forget it started as metaphor. When somebody tells you: “Look within”. He does not mean that you should start dissecting your body so that you can look within it. He is using a metaphor to tell you to use not your eyesight, but your insight. But the “in” even though spatial in origin (in/out), does not refer to a spatial realm. What is going on?

We have just discovered a realm that undeniably exists but is unlike the realm of everyday things. Yet I don’t recall being taught about it in school. When we did physics, I don’t recall the professor saying: “Oh yeah, and there’s this other realm that doesn’t exist in space and is not made out of atoms, it’s where your fears, desires and dreams live, but physics doesn’t cover that.” Nobody told me of that place where dreams exist, yet every night I went there. And when on summer nights I lie on the wet sand looking at the stars above, the strongest telescope cannot capture my awe.

It seemed to me, that the stories of men, were not just made out of spears and blood, stars and winds. But of fears and desires. Love and hate. And yet in school we were taught more about the courses of projectiles, than those of our hearts. There are more people who are trained to make a gun than there are people who ask why one should use it. Perhaps when we are taught a history of the realm of sentiments, we would be more inclined to direct our hearts towards the production of something more beneficial to our future. To echo Flaubert, what we need is a Sentimental Education. Not to make us more sentimental4, but wiser. To connect thoughts with feelings and feelings with thoughts. To be moved by the right feelings while thinking the right thoughts and taking the right action. That is wisdom.

Fritz Lang, the director of the film Metropolis, was alarmed by the heartless rationality that seemed to be taking the upper hand in leading the direction of Western societies. His belief was that a world ruled by thought empty of emotion is bound to lead to a dehumanized society that was cruel and blind to its own immorality. Where men had become cogs in machines of their own making, alienated from one another.

Let us not forget the wisdom expressed in the film’s main message: The mediator between the head and the hands must be the heart.

Many people are looking to philosophy the same way some who suffer look for a drug: they want something for the pain.
But this is not doing philosophy. This is buying the spiritual equivalent of a painkiller. In fact, it is the very antithesis of philosophy since what you’re doing is not questioning yourself and your actions but rather trying to look for something that caters to your pre-existing needs and worldview.

Some people believe that producing little videos about what some philosopher said is doing philosophy. It is not. That’s merely popularizing philosophical information, it is not doing philosophy. While this practice definitely has value we should not confuse the two. Making a video talking about martial arts does not make you a martial artist. Nor does watching it. Publishing this piece of text does not make me a philosopher either.

Because philosophy is not a product1 but an activity. The result of it may be writings, videos etc. But let’s not confuse the act of love with the children it may or may not produce as a result. Unfortunately the word tends to be used as a noun, as in someone having a “a philosophy” and people forget that it also refers to an activity, as captured by the verb to philosophize. Philosophies are just, at best, more systematic opinions, and opinions are like…well, you know…everybody has one.

Philosophical activity is something entirely different. Though it has no solid content, no ready-made “solution” to offer your aching soul, it does offer something else. It offers you the exercise your soul needs to get off the couch and walk again after being fed too many “chicken soups of the soul”.
Just like physical exercise, there are good and bad ways of doing it. You can do it alone, and engage in the soul’s conversation with itself, to use an expression from Plato’s Theaetetus, or you can do it with others, and engage in symphilosophein, as Aristotle would call it. You can do it in the spirit of antagonismos (against another) or synagonismos (with another for a common purpose)2. Done wrongly, it may spiral down to senseless hostility towards oneself and others. You can cause injury without any benefit. That is why Plato cautioned against the misuse of philosophical techniques, like dialectics, and required its participants to have acquired a certain maturity before practicing them, advocating the ethic of dialogue. As I have pointed out in another post:

Though dialectics was not staged as a confrontation it was still a type of “combat, amicable but real”3 yet not against one another [in other words not antagonismos] but as a common undertaking [synagonismos], of willing participants in a climate of gentleness and under the ethics of dialogue that consisted in understanding that:

“A true dialogue is possible only if the interlocutors want to dialogue. Thanks to this agreement between the interlocutors, which is renewed at each stage of the discussion, neither one of the interlocutors imposes his truth upon the other. On the contrary, dialogue teaches them to put themselves in each other’s place and thereby transcend their own point of view. By dint of a sincere effort, the interlocutors discover by themselves, and within themselves, a truth which is independent of them, insofar as they submit to the superior authority of the logos. Here, as in all ancient philosophy, philosophy consists in the movement by which the individual transcends himself toward something which lies beyond him. For Plato, this something was the logos: discourse which implies the demands of rationality and universality. This logos, more­over, did not represent a kind of absolute knowledge; instead, it was equivalent to the agreement which is established between interlocutors who are brought to admit certain positions in common, and by this agreement transcend their particular points of view.”4

At this point it may be worth to remember that the love of wisdom properly followed leads from the particular to the universal, so the exercise of Platonic dialectics is essentially an exercise of love, where the interlocutors help one another give birth to truths that go beyond themselves. This was not mere discourse but

“…a “form of life” (to use J. Mittel­strass’ expression) which was practiced by the interlocutors; for insofar as, in the act of dialoguing, they posited themselves as subjects but also transcended themselves, they experienced the logos which transcends them. Moreover, they also experienced that love of the good which is presupposed by every attempt at dialogue. From this perspective, the object of the discussion and its doctrinal content are of secondary importance. What counts is the practice of dialogue, and the transformation which it brings. Sometimes, the function of dialogue can even be to run into aporia [the Greek word for impasse], and thus to reveal the limits of language – its occasional inability to communicate moral and existential experience.

Ultimately, to use the expression of Luc Brisson, what mattered was “learning to live in a philosophical way;” with a common will to carry out disinterested research and in deliberate opposition to sophistic mercantilism. This was already a choice of life. To live in a philosophical way meant, above all, to turn toward intellectual and spiritual life, carrying out a conversion which involved “the whole soul” – which is to say, the whole of moral life. For Plato, science and knowledge are never purely theoretical and abstract knowledge, which could be placed “ready-made” within the soul. When Socrates said that virtue is knowledge, he was not using “knowledge” to mean pure, abstract knowledge of the good. Rather, he meant knowledge which chooses and wants the good­, in other words, an inner disposition in which thought, will, and desire are one.
[…] The philosopher’s entire role will therefore consist in permitting his interlocutor to “realize” in the strongest sense of the word, what the true good is and what true value is.”5

Philosophical activity done right can lead to profound insight and transformation, a lifelong love for wisdom, and the communal rejoicing of those who seek it, the Aristotelian syneuocheisthai6. For Plato it went as far as being a kind of transcendental love, which is where we get the expression Platonic Love from, though nowadays it has lost much of its original meaning7.

It is engaging in that aspect of philosophy that takes you closer to being a philosopher8. It is that which I want to explore with others, not merely exchange philosophical recipes with one another, but learn to cook the marrow of life in the fire of wisdom!

Doing that can be scary. That’s why I always felt that the archetypical motto of philosophy should always be what echoed from antiquity9 all the way to the enlightenment10: Sapere Aude! Dare to be wise!

But you don’t have to dare alone. Dare with me. I make no guarantees of wisdom, I only pledge my courage and goodwill.

Introduction

“πάντα χωρεῖ καὶ οὐδὲν μένει” [Everything changes and nothing stays fixed] – Heraclitus, as quoted by Plato in Cratylus, 402a-402b.

Though we can ponder timeless questions we exist in time. Our desires, needs and aspirations are conditioned by where we find ourselves in the timeline of our lives. This simple undeniable fact forces us to recast the question with respect to the search for an ideal person in our love lives. Ideal for what stage in our lives?
Similarly undeniable is the fact that growth occurs in stages and seems to be of at least two kinds. One that happens passively through the mere passage of time and another that is earned through the active use of our faculties and the interactions we have with nature and others.

The existence of these two facts, which are easily ascertainable with a moment’s reflection, makes the prevalence of the notion that there is a single ideal person out there for us that will be the love of our lives quite puzzling. I call it the myth of the one.

The Myth of the One

Narrated ad nauseam in movies and romance novels, the goal of your love life is to find or be found by the one. The one is everything you ever wanted and more. The one may not be perfect for everyone but is perfect for you. From the instant you lay eyes on each other, a feeling of implacable destiny draws you to one another and you soon discover that you are soul-and-body-mates. You will meet, overcome all obstacles, and live happily ever after, married with children, one big happy family – and then the credits roll. Because in real life, even though sometimes experiences that feel like that do happen, and I am as guilty of surrendering to the allure of this myth like any other, things aren’t that simple. In fact, in this text, in contrast to the potentially beneficial ways to respond to that allure I mention in my introduction to my love letters project whose name refers to it, I would argue that believing and living with that mythical notion is deleterious for three reasons:

First of all, by believing in that myth you have more of a reason to quickly ditch people when things get hard. You would say to yourself, or have that be said unto you, “He/she can’t be the one, otherwise things wouldn’t be that hard.” But whenever relationships get serious and profound they get hard, but they’re worth it – sometimes. However, you wouldn’t know it if you use your belief in the myth of the one to rob yourself of any opportunity to discover that.

Secondly, believing in the myth of the one at times can lead you to attempt to force someone who is almost the one to be 100% the one by pressuring them to do or be things they don’t want to do or be. Thus, ruining a good relationship that might have had bloomed further because a real person didn’t measure up to an imaginary one.

Thirdly, believing in the myth of the one can lead you to be with…no one – because no one is “good enough”. However, it is prudent to remember that prolonged inexperience in relationships, does not lead anywhere other than emotional and sexual frustration. It also leaves your relationship judgment blunt and you end up making fewer and less astute decisions. So that even if you do come across some-one, you wouldn’t be able to tell, or if you did, you might ruin what you could have made to work had you not been so inexperienced.

The question you need to ask is: “What reason or evidence do I have for believing in the myth of the one?” Look around. Not one. So why are so many captivated by its allure?

The Need for Eternity and Happy Endings

Perhaps the reason we are so enamored with the concept is because we are terrified of change and love a happy ending. Change, in some deep corner of our minds, reminds us of the fact of our eventual death, which according to Becker is the primary denial affecting our lives. The one is idealized perfection, and what is perfect doesn’t change.
The experience of love, apart from its potential to make us feel extraordinarily happy, seems to make time stand still. Love is our portal to eternity, both in an experiential sense and, through reproduction, in the practical sense of giving birth to some part of ourselves that will live on beyond our demise1. The myth of the one, combines love, perfection and immortality in an irresistible package.

Eternity is Overrated

Duration in itself is neither good nor bad. We don’t stop watching beautiful sunsets just because they’re short and it’s not the number of hours that determines the greatness of a film. Of course, we like the good to last forever but reality tends to change. It seems rather presumptuous, in a world that appears to be in constant flux, to expect or demand something to remain unchanged.

It is that very wish that sometimes leads people to imagine they have a different relationship than the one they’re actually having. When friends or family point out that the relationship the partners are describing is different than the one they’re observing, some couples react by distancing themselves from the person who exposed their fantasy, trying to keep it alive. The pain of the truth is harder to bear than the sweetness of a fantasy. The more ethereal, abstract and mystical their “love” becomes, the harder it is for every day reality to refute it.

The sober truth is that sometimes relationships complete their purpose and simply have to end or transform into something else. They gave us all they had to give us, and it was good, but sometimes we have to move on, and look back with gratitude to what we were fortunate to experience rather than make sour what was good by artificial extension.

However, just because you believe that relationships may not last forever should not be your excuse for running away with the first obstacle. Sometimes an obstacle is not a sign signaling the end but something to overcome signaling a new beginning. It takes wisdom to be able to distinguish which is which. When relationships do have to end, ideally it should be in an atmosphere of joyous commencement: celebrating the end of something and the beginning of another.

Dealing with Change and the Myth of the One

“The tragedy of marriage is that while all women marry thinking that their man will change, all men marry believing their wife will never change.” – Len Deighton, London Match (London: Hutchinson, 1985) p.18.

“Men marry because they are tired; women, because they are curious: both are disappointed.” – Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray.

“Love is an ideal thing, marriage a real thing; a confusion of the real with the ideal never goes unpunished.” – Johann Wolfgang von Goethe.

“Μεταβολή πάντων γλυκύ [Change is always sweet]” – Euripides, in Orestes, voiced by Electra.

“Τὸ γὰρ ἡδύ, ἐὰν πολύ, οὐ τί γε ἡδύ [A sweet thing tasted too often is no longer sweet.]” – Ancient Greek proverb.

In relationships, we, our notions —or both— change. So dealing with change of any kind is perhaps the crucial skill that determines our success in them. If we imagine that the love between two people is like a fire that provides warmth and light, it may come as no surprise that couples, want to protect and nurture it. Some believe that once it is ignited they just need to keep very still so that they don’t disturb it, lest it goes out. These are the people that don’t want anything to change. Others, afraid it will go out, protect it so tightly they leave no passage for air to flow, tragically putting it out by their own effort to protect it; or they throw too much wood too early, producing a lot of smoke but little light and warmth; or grow it to such proportions it burns them.

Many get bitterly disappointed by their failures, opt to never try again and counsel others against trying. They end up leading lives of quiet desperation, devoid of light and warmth.

Love is awesome, in the original sense of the word, rightly inspiring dread and wonder. We should exhibit both curiosity and awareness of the real dangers involved in experiencing it.

But everyone needs to face our myths and the choices that change forces upon us.

The Trap of an Endless Dilemma

There is a class of dilemmas that are impossible to completely settle. For example, let’s say that you are trying to change a certain relationship, yourself or another person. After a few unsuccessful attempts a dilemma arises in you:
“Is it impossible to change “X” or have I simply not found a way to change it?”
Notice that irrespective of how many attempts I make, someone may always repeat the same question. For perhaps in most cases, we cannot be 100% sure of whether there might be some undiscovered way of changing what we want to change. Perhaps what we declare impossible, another achieves by trying harder or smarter, leaving us feeling weak or foolish. But if no one achieves that specific change during our lifetime, we feel justified and glad with our choice.
I’m afraid anyone caught under the spell of the myth of the one faces a similar dilemma: “Does the one not exist or have I simply not found him/her yet?”
Don’t let your mind trap itself into that infinite loop. We are mortal. Let us not forget Marvell’s wisdom.

Everybody’s Broken

Kintsukuroi is concept in Japanese. It means “to repair with gold” and it is the art of repairing pottery with gold or silver lacquer and understanding that the piece is more beautiful for having been broken. Love is that gold. It doesn’t matter if we are broken.
Everyone we meet will have flaws. Human relationships are not based on perfection but on need and imperfection:

“A human relationship is not based on differentiation and perfection, for these only emphasize the differences or call forth the exact opposite; it is based, rather, on imperfection, on what is weak, helpless, and in need of support – the very ground and motive of dependence. The perfect has no need of the other, but weakness has, for it seeks support and does not confront its partner with anything that might force him into an inferior position and even humiliate him.” – C. Jung, The Undiscovered Self.

It would be a mistake to believe that I am celebrating neediness and dependence. What I’m actually doing is exonerating need in our psychic court. It is ok to need others. Others need you too!

Just as with everything in life, it is a matter of degree. Indulge too much and you succumb to neediness, a kind of selfishness. But denying it completely is not the mark of superiority but of pathology:

“…we must be cautious about calling Need-love “mere selfishness”. Mere is always a dangerous word. No doubt Need-love, like all our impulses, can be selfishly indulged. A tyrannous and gluttonous demand for affection can be a horrible thing. But in ordinary life no one calls a child selfish because it turns for comfort to its mother; nor an adult who turns to his fellow “for company”. Those, whether children or adults, who do so least are not usually the most selfless. Where Need-love is felt there may be reasons for denying or totally mortifying it; but not to feel it is in general the mark of the cold egoist. Since we do in reality need one another (“it is not good for man to be alone”), then the failure of this need to appear as Need-love in consciousness–in other words, the illusory feeling that it is good for us to be alone–is a bad spiritual symptom; just as lack of appetite is a bad medical symptom because men do really need food.” – C.S. Lewis, The Four Loves.

We all have needs. Your partner may not fulfill all your needs. You may not fulfill theirs. That is not because they or you are not an “ideal partner” but because both of you are human. Face this reality, don’t deny it. There are options:

Perhaps those needs were not meant to be fulfilled by your partner anyway. Embark on a journey of self-discovery – maybe you’ll find a way to satisfy those needs on your own by healing old wounds.
Assess how important those needs are. Perhaps you can live without them being satisfied. Simply accept this reality, cause any other may be a lot worse.
Be patient. Perhaps they weren’t real needs at all but merely passing fancies.

Satisfy those needs through friends and family.
Sublimate them into art.
Consider opening up your relationship.
Consider ending it.

Not all relationships are meant to last till your final breath. In my experience it is better to change partners (or live alone) than to try to change your partners.
Perhaps Rumi was right when he wrote:

“A thousand half-loves
must be forsaken to take
one whole heart home.”

– Rumi, The Book of Love.

How do our views around technology, leisure and work determine our present and future? Can we use technology to usher a new Hellenism like Wilde suggested1? The talk embedded below, which I originally recorded for BIL Davos 2017 and a different version of it in Greek for the first Maker Faire in Athens (Oct. 1st 2016) also found further below, mixes data about the effects of technology and automation on work and society with insights and observations from the philosophy and languages of classical antiquity (ancient Greek and Latin) to ask us to reflect on the status and meaning of being a citizen and a maker and whether we’d like emerging technologies to be used to enrich the few or liberate the many.

The Greek version of the talk can be found below. It is adapted for a Greek audience and is shorter owing to the requirements of the event: