Lord of the World by Robert Hugh Benson (pub. 1907)

 

‘Lord of the World’ has arrived just in time to be contemporary.  Quite punctual. I make out from internal evidence that its time is of the present moment.  Written in 1907 the classic trope of ‘100 years hence’ or thereabouts is operative and we can currently see its dystopian nightmare from which we are trying to awake.  Genocide is being live streamed with soldiers trying on the lingerie of commandeered houses.  The plain of Megiddo would be a nice place to try a nuclear bomb solution when all seems lost.

So much for the reality what about the book?  The ‘Lord of the World’ is of course the Antichrist, a word which is never used.  You must decide.  Is Julian Felsenburgh an agent empowered by Old Nick or the sulphurous one himself? But he is bringing peace and global unity, can that be bad?   When the book opens we are brought up to speed on the developments that have led to the ripeness of this vile fruit.  It’s complicated but when you break it down it’s really very simple.

“And America?” asked Percy.

“Ah! all that is very complicated. But she knew her strength and annexed Canada the same year. That was when we were at our weakest.”

The prediction of tom foolery of the 21st. century seems right:

“It is all much simpler, certainly,” he murmured, glancing first at the old complicated colouring of the beginning of the twentieth century, and then at the three great washes of the twenty-first.

He moved his finger along Asia. The words EASTERN EMPIRE ran across the pale yellow, from the Ural Mountains on the left to the Behring Straits on the right, curling round in giant letters through India, Australia, and New Zealand. He glanced at the red; it was considerably smaller, but still important enough, considering that it covered not only Europe proper, but all Russia up to the Ural Mountains, and Africa to the south. The blue-labelled AMERICAN REPUBLIC swept over the whole of that continent, and disappeared right round to the left of the Western Hemisphere in a shower of blue sparks on the white sea.

All of these elements are at war or about to go to war.  Things are in a bad way but then Felsenburgh arrives, an obscure American senator preaching to all nations in their own languages moving from one place to another in an uncanny way.  Where will he pop up next?  Is he the Prince of Peace?  It certainly seems so.  The ecstatic audiences want to make him their leader, falling down before him.  Eventually he does become the President of Europe but that is merely a placeholding position.  He is in fact the Lord of the World.  We don’t mention his other title.  We never speak of the devil.

What of the state of religion, the force that should be resisting the neat solutions of the Tempter?

“Briefly,” he said, “there are three forces—Catholicism, Humanitarianism, and the Eastern religions. About the third I cannot prophesy, though I think the Sufis will be victorious. Anything may happen; Esotericism is making enormous strides—and that means Pantheism; and the blending of the Chinese and Japanese dynasties throws out all our calculations. But in Europe and America, there is no doubt that the struggle lies between the other two. We can neglect everything else. And, I think, if you wish me to say what I think, that, humanly speaking, Catholicism will decrease rapidly now. It is perfectly true that Protestantism is dead. Men do recognise at last that a supernatural Religion involves an absolute authority, and that Private Judgment in matters of faith is nothing else than the beginning of disintegration.

So there we are.  We see that there is a good deal of coincidence with out present condition.  But there, in the world of the book, how is the demonic power applied to its characters?  The Brand family, Oliver a government minister, his wife Mabel, and Brand’s mother ailing and in her latter days turning back to the Catholicism of her childhood. The priest that is sent for to administer Extreme Unction is Percy Franklin.  Such is the central character nexus of the book.

Father Percy is even moved by the power of Felsenburgh.

Gradually he became aware that this crowd was as no other that he had ever seen. To his psychical sense it seemed to him that it possessed a unity unlike any other. There was magnetism in the air. There was a sensation as if a creative act were in process, whereby thousands of individual cells were being welded more and more perfectly every instant into one huge sentient being with one will, one emotion, and one head. The crying of voices seemed significant only as the stirrings of this creative power which so expressed itself. Here rested this giant humanity, stretching to his sight in living limbs so far as he could see on every side, waiting, waiting for some consummation—stretching, too, as his tired brain began to guess, down every thoroughfare of the vast city.

You will gather that the theological element is dominant for after all the wastes of history it comes to the final battle of good versus evil.  Man as the measure of all things is inadequate as a rule.  Those ‘inches’ are paltry, trifling, puny, tabid faced with the dimension of eternal malignity of infinite shape.

Along with many nice gadget touches, apps even, rubber roads, asbestos furniture, volors flitting like silver fish there is continuity with our past and a reach forward in a morally credible way.  The minister of euthanasia are on hand when a volor crashes.  The right to die is a protected one with an eight day waiting period  in a genteel rest home if that is what you want.  All very rational.

Add this book to your Orwell and your Huxley.  You are worth it.  Time is short.

Down at the Knowledge Department

 

Let me ask what may seem to be a foolish question?  Do you use the means of knowledge, the pramana, when we know something.  Is it simply that you know something and on examination you discover that your knowledge has such and such a shape as it were.

I might use an axe to chop wood but I do not use pramana in the same instrumental way.

Knowledge exists and it has this form.  Am I labouring the obvious?

Many elements may be at work in a single awareness.  Is this why in other than the advaitic account of the pramanas categories are conflated.  Presumption (arthapatti) becomes inference (anumana).

You saw that your friend was not present at the expected rendezvous.  Was it that you perceived this or is it a case of non-apprehension of existence (anupalabadhi)?

You go from the thing itself, our knowledge, and then you can see the shape of that knowledge.

Nobody denies (sunyavadins?) perception and the thing itself as an independent entity  which can exist as an unknown object.  That is primary reality or realism pur sang.  There is experience, there is knowledge.  It has a form.  Experience fills the form, so to speak.

Conversation at the Epistemological Counter of the Knowledge Department:

Do you have a form for that?  I couldn’t possibly let you have that experience without a form. In duplicate, one for your mind and the other for the external world.

Tale of a Cheap Maul

  

 

 

I have a few axes which are fine for the usual ash which I cut, a 36“ 3.5 lbs felling axe which does most of my splitting; ash being easy to split. For splitting back up in the case of broken handles there is a 32“ felling axe 4lbs. Recently I also got a 29“ German style thin bladed axe  1250 gms. beautiful for limbing and breaking up small branches.  The recent storms brought down a lot of trees which I’m getting through.  One big spruce of many branches which is very knotty will  certainly require a maul.  Most of it broke off barring the main trunk of 28 inches circumference.  Felling that with a 14inch bar was fun.  It obeyed my calculations.

A maul is not a refined tool so I wasn’t prepared to spend a lot of money just to process one tree.  How cheap did I go?  Very.  From Screwfix a splitting set for 37.45 euro comprising a maul/wedge/hatchet with hickory handles.  The wedge is a diamond type coming to a point which is easy to insert in a crack.

Hickory handle on the maul was a bit thick but here goes. Third strike I broke it inside the head.  Oh!  Still plenty of handle so I refitted it and when I cleaned out the wedges (wood and ring type) I noticed that the eye of the maul was not the normal one associated with striking tools.  There was a step in the interior half way up of 1.5 mm. allowing for a flare when the wedge is hammered home.  As the handle broke at that point I thought that perhaps the too sudden transition had caused the break.  Out came my file and I smoothed out the interior of the eye to a more gradual flare.  Cheap tools are really a kit but I enjoy getting them to function like much more expensive ones.  Rehandled the maul worked until the it broke inside the head again in a different place.  Hmm!  I have the receipt, yes, no I’ll go on.  Bad hickory, excessively kiln dried wood can be brittle, my theory.  I keep a few billets of riven ash about for handles so I set to making a new one.  More filing on the eye.  There you are, what you see, 32 inch handle with a pommel.  Head 4.85 lbs. which is comfortable to swing and it performs beautifully on the spruce.  The baby hatchet once sharpened helped to rough out the handle.  On an obdurate round  the wedge persuaded with the sledge works.  All good. (using safety glasses)

The Really Real in Advaita

  As I have been hinting I have always had a problem with the Advaitic use of the term ‘real’. How does the apophatic, that which outruns the mind, about which we cannot speak, how can it be real or unreal? It is beyond all that. The state of realization is such that mundane life is obliterated by bliss. Well, let it be so, but that does not derealize it. The contrast between the state of the sage and that of the seeker may be such that the one causes the other to lapse into insignificance, mere Maya, a misconception. The deep structure of reality is the truth; all else a veil. In my view it isn’t possible to totalize the use of the polar concepts real/unreal in this fashion. They always occur within a world. ‘Is this real butter's? ‘That is a fake Rolex, but a real watch’. ‘Your fears are unreal’ ‘That’s what I call real hospitality’.

etc., etc., Without labouring the point the use of terms real/unreal are contrasitive.  

This problem is recognised by Sankara who holds that the Vedas themselves become ‘unreal’ for the enlightened to which the objection comes - what use are they then, how can the real be achieved by use of the unreal? The answer which amounts to - you’ll know when you get there, for now keep saying your prayers.

Is this satisfactory if in fact the deep structure of reality underwrites what ‘Vedanta Paribhase’ calls perceptuality? That superimposition is possible as in normal perception is due to the unity of being.  

Swami S.S.S. remarks in his work on the preamble to the B.S.Bh.:

This argument does not hold water here; for the

wisdom of the Unity of Atman is attained only after

sublating all empirical thought. The Sruti also says

, What could one know and with what, when to the

knower, all has become Atman alone?' (Br. 4-5-15).

Sankara himself writes in so many words :-

" Nor is it possible to say that this intuition is use·

less, or that it is a delusion; for we see that it removes

avidya and that there is no other knowledge sublating

it. We _have already stated that it is only before the

intuition of the Unity of Atman, that all conventions

of real and false, obtain." SBh. 2-1-14, pp. 19, 20.

Is not the latter observation by Sankara on the convention of true/false or real/unreal a tacit recognition of what I have been holding. When you are beyond all those pairs of opposites or polar concepts they become useless.

The Wonder of Clay

 I am just the wrong sort of person to take up philosophy. Instead of studying six interpretations of a problem and what is wrong with them and then proffering an acceptable compromise I stand stunned and thunderstruck i.e. stundered by the force of the problem like a duck in a heavy shower. The advaitins use of the term ‘real’ and what it might mean is an example of my stultification. Why is ‘clay’ more ‘real’ than the vessels made of clay. They have been given a name and a form and are thereby relegated to the region of the mutable. How does that work? The humble water pot has being, it exists, it is. This lump of clay though it has no name other than the generic ‘lump’, has a form. Is not ‘clay’ here taking the place approximately of Aristotelian prime matter. It is always associated with substantial form in the existing object even though we can rationally conceptualize it. ‘Clay’ can also be viewed as one of the causes of a vessel made of clay. It is a material cause and not more or less ‘real’ than the vessel itself.

What then is the particular point of ‘real’ clay? Is it an analogy that has run away from home and become a metaphor? Everything is Brahman or so to speak made of Brahman. Pure Being is manifesting as all this congeries of name and form. The ‘clay’ analogy is not an ontological doctrine. Has my wonder ceased?

The Irony of Superimposition (Adhyasa)

 

In Chapter 2 of Upadesa Sahasri in response to the Disciple’s difficulty with superimposition the Teacher replies:

#65: Thus  told, the teacher said, “Do not make any superimposition, if you know it to be the root of all evils.”

Though the footnote of the translator interprets this as an injunction: “i.e. Give it up. Know that you are pure consciousness and never really identified with the body etc”. ; I offer the ironic observation.  The pair of interlocutors are engaged in a conversation, interacting with each other.  They are therefore using the sensory and intellectual faculties that require superimposition to be operative.

Does that apply to the Teacher who is a self realised sage?  Can he be using superimposition in an ironic fashion knowing its structure and how it is only possible via the unity of being.  As is said in a symbolic fashion in Katha Upanishad: 2:2:15

"The sun does not shine there, nor the moon and the stars, nor these lightnings-not to speak of this fire. He shining, everything shines after Him. By His light all this is lighted.