Reconnecting with the spiritual roots of the Western civilization

This is it!

Peter Kingsley speaks about the same profound connection with the Ancient Greeks’ vision for our Western civilization that I have been experiencing for the past couple of years. We can call it the ultimate resonance with the intentionality of the Past that created our Now and is a source for forming our future.

I couldn’t avoid the understanding all our Western civilization is really a dream of the great Ancient visionaries, not only of pre-Socratic mystics but also of the great spiritual leaders. I experience profound (trans)personal connection with some of the thinkers from the past and from the present.

The words of Plato and Plotinus speak directly to my Heart. The similar connection I have experienced with the gigantic personalities of Vasily Nalimov, Vladimir Bekhterev, and Fyodor Dostoevsky. If you really think about it, every manifestation from the past has never gone anywhere. The sentience is as alive as ever; and the individual suffering must be released into the freedom of the vast expanse.

It’s not just manifestation of impersonal Unity, it’s also manifestation of quite a (trans)personal intentionality, very unique self-sense of a visionary passion that we must ponder about.

Reconnection with our own cultural roots is a must.

A comment I wrote to my friend JF as a response to this interview:

I can’t believe I found another living person who resonates with the deeper truths about the European spiritual lineage that I discovered this and last year. When I embrace the contemporary world with my awareness, I couldn’t escape the understanding that the entire Judeo-Christian civilization that existed for the last two thousand years was in fact a direct product of the great mystics’ powerful visions and of all-transcending and all-including intentionality of Christ’s personality, which in turn emerged from the background highly influenced by Platonic non-duality, Egyptian mysticism, and Eastern contemplation.

By the way, this vision is almost exactly the vibratory level that Vasily Nalimov referred to in his works, when he spoke about and embodied the profound resonance with the geniuses of the past, the past which is our memory to be re-lived.

And here I wonder how this relates to Russia and the great Eurasian conglomerate of cultures; how this dissociation from the roots contributes to the poor condition of the state and its people; and how the profound meaning can be found in the fact that there’s so much suffering, that so many people, they were so radically sacrificed and put six feet under into the abyss of unbeing, while they’re actually so vital, so alive, and so crying for our help.

I couldn’t stop myself from recalling Alexander Vertinsky’s song: “Я не знаю зачем и кому это нужно, кто послал их на смерть недрожавшей рукой, только так беспощадно, так зло и ненужно окунули их в вечный покой.” [“I don't know what for, or who needed it, who sent them to death with an untrembling hand, but so ruthlessly, so evilly and so needlessly they were put to eternal peace.”] It is not a coincidence that Vasily Nalimov quoted this song in his major works when he wrote about the Karmic tragedy of that peoples in Russia suffered.

Why? What for? What is the ultimate meaning? WHAT WILL JUSTIFY ALL THESE DEATHS, MURDERED CHILDREN, MOTHERS, AND FATHERS, BROKEN HOPES AND UNENDING SUFFERING?

Anamnesis and aletheia

I am in the process of re-watching a movie called Memento (2000). My dear friend reminded me of the existence of it. It is a movie by one of the most gifted directors of our time Christopher Nolan (who also created The Dark Knight which is simply a perfect film if you are in the right mode of consciousness). The protagonist of Memento, Leonard, is suffering from anterograde amnesia, a clinical condition that blocks mind/brain’s capacity to remember new phenomena. In order to survive in the world which is full of people who would like to take advantage of his condition Leonard constantly leaves himself notes to remind who he is, where he is, and what his goals are. 

The feeling of watching this movie is so uncanny that I had to stop watching it. And when I went to bed this uncanny feeling didn’t disappear, insisted on it being followed and brought me back to my computer to write this down. To be straightforward, this uncanny feeling is that of the recognition that in some bigger sense Leonard’s condition reminds me of my own—and, perhaps, it appears familiar not only to me but also to other people.  

I feel that in some way I live a similar life always leaving myself notes in attempt to re-mind myself who I truly am in the fullness of my being-in-the-world. I have this and that peak experience, I glance here and there on my true nature, I become one with something which is what I am, I become capable to hold it in the gesture of my meditative awareness for longer periods; and yet once in a while I slip into the darkness of forgetfulness. In a sense, this very blog is a note that I leave to myself to constantly remind myself of what I am—or at least of what it is worth living for and of what it is possible to choose as one’s own destiny. 

In addition to becoming a person on the frontal egoic plane in the process of individual growth and development mediated to a great extent through socialization it seems that my life is about, first of all, reminding myself of something—of my Soul’s True Love if you let me put it that way—then remembering it and then knowing through embodying my True Self (and finally letting go of it and stepping into not-knowing). As long as I am locked within the cell of my mind which constantly chaotically twinkles and flows I have to re-mind myself of what I am and then to train my mind to remember. But eventually when the personal mind gets transcended but included, once one enters the narrow gate, a bigger entity emerges, the one that simply knows and feels and moves and speaks and sees. Here, life becomes quite easy: I simply smell my way further and operate on the skills my well-adapted personal ego has learnt through the years of learning. Sometimes I could recall to my presence some farther events and perspectives that I have once known somewhere else—and feel as if I am actually there—and yet I don’t need to rely that much on re-minding myself of all those limited details any longer—I let go. 

Sometimes I can even forget what I said a minute or an hour ago and there is simply too much information in the world now for me to try to remind myself of all of it. When I open my email client and see all these different emails from different streams of life, different parts of the world, different projects, different ideas… they simply overwhelm if I attempt to remind myself of everything through my mind.  

I don’t know where the need for re-minders would disappear. My friend Jim whose depth of mind fascinates me says the word money comes from the word warning or reminder. Will the times when we don’t have to re-mind ourselves come? How would it be if we simply… remember—for starters? All the beautiful churches, all the beautiful temples, all the beautiful pyramids, all the houses, all the cities, all the graves, all the monuments, all the books, all the photographs, all the paintings, etc.—are they here to simply re-mind us of something once in a while or can they act as catalyzing portals into remembering and eventually simply and profoundly non-forgettingly being and fulfilling one’s destiny on multiple planes of living. I don’t mind if it happens.

I am concluding with an entry from a dictionary on Plato’s works:

truth

The Greek word for truth, aletheia, incorporates the word for “forgetting”; a-letheia might be translated as “unforgetting” or “remembering.” This etymology is particularly significant in Plato’s epistemology, which maintains that true knowledge can be achieved only through anamnesis, the soul’s recollection of the Forms it has glimpsed during its circuit through heaven in metempsychosis. For Plato, knowledge of mere phenomena cannot attain the truth, as only the ideal Forms are truly real.