Posted on 07/26/2003 3:17:18 PM PDT by betty boop
I particularly liked Milun's concept of "surplus consciousness," which I would explain as that "part" of the personal, individual sphere of conscience and consciousness that the totalizing state has failed to "territorialize" or socialize, and not for lack of trying. It is that which survives such attempts, because it retains a social or cultural memory of its national past, its traditions, its heritage.
Anyhoot, it seem to be the sort of thing that no state can simply eradicate, no matter how hard it tries -- short of making full frontal lobotomy mandatory for every subject of the state.... [HRC, please call your office....]
Anyhoot, this may not be everybody's cup of tea.... If so, please pass it by.
Yet, personally, I found even the footnotes fascinating!
Don't know whether you've got the time or the interest. The piece really does run long. But to my mind, it's a worthwhile investment of energy....
I dunno, NewRome Tactitus. My take on this is we're talking "old age," not "new age" here.
I don't think we're talking about a "sociological mixing of an old culture with a new genre," at least not as the first order of business. What I thought I was looking at was a cultural means of rescustitating Hungarian national identity after some 40-some years of communist repression of human intellect, psychology and spirit.
But I guess it all depends on what one sees, how one sees it, and how one frames the problem arising from the hypothetical description of what one has seen, and tried to frame into a common language that conveys meaning.
At the end of the day, it seems to me that, only according to God's law (natural and moral) can questions of this order make any sense at all, in the first place.
This essay provides numerous challenges to "conventional thinking" about quite critical subjects, subjects relevant to our own American "culture war." IMHO. And so I am so grateful to you for writing, NRT. Thank you!
"He then criticises this interpretation by reference to existing pagan folk customs (descriptions of which tend to resemble the shamanpunk concerts). Grandpierre seeks to demonstrate that the shaman does not call on powers beyond himself but more exactly on powers that he himself possesses: with the imperative call of his chant, “the shaman’s text magically comes true and transforms him [the shaman]. By speaking the text and performing the actions marked in the text, the shaman heightens his own dispositional, emotional readiness”(p. 92). [And presumably communicates and shares that experience with others.]"
Jung, Neitzche and Rock and Roll! "Riders on the storm...."
Just today I replied to an email regarding the miscreant, narcissitic, guru pastor of a church fellowship in which I've been involved:
Alas, an expert counterfeiter will become more apt at conveying the designs of truth than most, who dispassionately and unintently regard the truth honestly. That is a horrible and outrageous observation, but outrageously accurate I think and descriptive of much "lukewarm" church life.
Agreed, Brother Arlen. One can hardly tell what is counterfeit and what is real anymore.
But in dealing with questions of truth, dear brother, where there seems to be a conflict of possible interpretations, I just naturally assume that whatever truth can become socially effective at any time, in any age, is the product of human thinking, as resolved along the lines of God-given (and sanctioned) natural human experience, tuned to the needs of that age. Which is just to say, perhaps, that I trust in human reason, because it is divinely ordained.
To say age-specific "tuning" might appear helpful from time to time is not to say that God's universal laws (moral and natural) have been suspended, or that they can be "bent" by gratuitous human wishing. That does not then make it so that divine law has been excised on grounds of being no longer relevant to human concerns. Quite the contrary.
Instead, I declare axiomatically, that such are ever and always the prime human concerns, for the reason that God has declared it so. Else man cannot be man, just another brute....
I would ask you to consider this possibility.... The way I see it, this isn't tantamount to "selling out to Satan." What this is all about is reminding Satan that he cannot work outside of his own effective sphere of competence....
I think that sort of thing is well worth doing, as often as possible, these days. FWIW
Thanks for sharing your sense of this. Here is how I see it. To put it bluntly, man is meant to be a spiritual coupler. That is how we interact with the realm of the spirit. That is the purpose for which we were created. (And that is why we do not have eyes to see, nor ears to hear, nor a tongue to express the realm of spirit in our walk both Earthly and fallen. Beyond perhaps a very unperceiving stumbling around, we perceive as by the spirit with whom our spirit is coupled.) Like Jung, Grandpierre is attempting to deny that. As with Jung though, there are beings that don't mind this, as long as the subject is made available.
Parts of the Church are stumbling around in much the same kind of experimentation that At.Gr. is flip-flopping in and I've been one of those who has done so. Now, the Lord will make Himself known as He will and I do believe He is limbering and warming up quite a few Christians, including in "empirical" ways of relating. But at the same time, there are "different devils for different levels," as I've heard it put in charismatic circles and the spirit is terrain of spirits, more than a mere 'home field advantage.' That terrain is not a realm for walking blindly --including the blindness of braces on brain and blinkers on eyes that you've referred to elsewhere. What good does it do, to gain spiritual sensitivity while maintaining a "modern" or "materialist" denial of the persons (spirits) that one attracts? That, to say nothing of the denying the Spirit who waits on the side, as a gentleman will.
What is happening with this music reminds me of the last scenes in Quigley Down Under where the Australian aborigine house servants, having been set free by Quigley, leave the Marsten ranch - dropping all their civilized clothes.
In the next scene, the British are fixing to arrest/kill Quigley - a dust storm comes in and when it clears, the hills are lined with aborigines facing down the soldiers (who of course leave.)
The message of course is that no artificial social order can eradicate the spirit of a man. Change in the human spirit must come from within.
Changing from within, being born again, is central to Christianity. The greatest testimony of the faith is changed lives.
Tyrants can't kill the human spirit, man can't kill his own spirit, but Christ can make him a new creature! Praise God!!!
I spend a lot of time in rapturous “night travels.” These spiritual journeys are all about the Father and Jesus - worship, love, joy! There’s always music when I’m “off” in this fashion, but I don’t need any physical sounds much less large crowds to get into that frame of spirit.
On that higher plane, there may be risks of engaging unseemly or dark beings. I’ve never encountered any I’m sure because of the Spirit within me. There was however a time I was tempted to ask any question (it was offered to me) and I declined choosing to worship over learning or doing, which felt wrongly self-serving.
Seems to me it could be dangerous to embark on a spiritual journey without the indwelling of the Holy Spirit. Without that assurance, one would need to follow the Scripture to discern the spirits (Hebrews, etc.).
AG is not a materialist, unspun. Obviously, based on the quotes Milum takes from an essay he wrote nearly 20 years ago, he was engaged in efforts to revitalize spirit in Hungary, particularly among its youth, because the official regime there was (a) into social, cultural, and mind control; and (b) denied any scope to spirit beyond what the state was able to control. Shamanpunk was a way "to blow the doors off" repressed spirit, and demonstrate to individuals the reality of their own spirit and personality, after 40 years intellectual, moral, and spiritual flattening by the official state. AG's efforts in this regard commenced in 1978, well before the Hungarian communist regime fell, in 1990. There was danger to him in taking such risks. But he helped to make a cultural revolution inside Hungary that most likely contributed to the collapse of the state in critical ways.
Grandpierre is neither a materialist nor an atheist. His concern for his home country is that it can emerge from the devastation of Soviet-style communism into a post-modern, liberal (in the classical sense) state that respects the liberty and dignity of each Hungarian, under a system of ordered liberty and equal justice similar to our own.
But Hungary has to build such a future out of her own unique cultural resources, two of which are discussed by Milum: the Christian Church and Hungary's ancient folk culture and folklore/poetry.
I certainly wish Hungary Godspeed in the realization of a just and open civil society.
AG is not a materialist, unspun.
He comes from a culture of indoctrinated materialism, so perhaps I let that affect my word choice. But I asked you what you knew about his spirituality and if I recall you inferred that he may not admit to actual spirits... or at least not as it is revealed by God. From the reference I pulled out in this thread, he would deny spirits outside of one's own --perhaps some kind of a materialistically centered spirituality, I think --much like Jung (you have heard people attempt to describe the "anima" as if it were based upon the material element of of a being, eh?). Or, maybe AGr. is simply egocentric/agnostic in terms of the relational nature of the human spirit at its core and foundation.
People will often talk of "spirit" and "spiritual" as if it were fundamentally poetic and detached from reality, metaphoric... of something er other.... I suppose people who do are prone to do so, "calls em like they sees em," as the fabled baseball umpire said.
One is doing well when one treats subjects as tested by history --and sure, seasoned by benign cultural idiosyncracies (it's very nice to savor one's ethnicity). But in as much as this is true, one is doing best when one is affected by and deals with truth and principles themselves, free of being beholden to anyone's prior experiences and "traditions taught by men." That is when the best traditions are wrought.
But I suppose that Mr. Grandpierre may believe in some kind of relational nature of the spirit (that would seem so, if he promulgates something like universal or collective consciousness). But here is where it is a gross error to "miss the mark" at all. Close counts in horeshoes, but not in spirituality. I know people pass through phases, but blessed are they who find Truth by their next breath.
Cultures and nations are temporal, though they must be well kept as a gardens for their seed.
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