R Scott Bakker's :The Great Ordeal (spoilers)

[Kalbear]

29 minutes ago, Sci-2 said:

Do you remember the quote? Did he mean the third trilogy was what happens after the end or the series as a whole?

The quote was mentioned earlier on this thread. It doesn't say that that's the third part of the series, but it's pretty clear that the series is about the apocalypse - not only it occurring, but what happens afterwards. 

[Sci-2]

19 minutes ago, Baztek said:

You're right, actually, as far as how Bakker's been playing it, it's grim but it might not stay grim. What I mean is even though the solution is turning your back on conditioned existence to grasp the Absolute which is beyond all relativities, the process is (as far as the Western mystery traditions are concerned) is not a mystic ecstasy and melting back into the homogeneous Divine but a sublimation or shining through the darkness of matter in this world while retaining your individuality.

 

This goes back to that Cish quote about living the transcendence. Think of it like this:

Thesis: The One, the Absolute, the Tao, the necessary background medium that is the anchor and root of all existence, but is not defined by it. Musically, a tone that in its subharmonics carries the potentiality of all possible tones.

Antithesis: Humanity, Becoming, here and now. Myriad, distinct tones. Dissonance is evil, harmony is good.

Synthesis: realizing the original perfection while individuated. All these disparate tones contributing not to a homogenous perfection but a heterogenous one, in which the particularities of each individual contribute to a richer, and arguably more perfect, reality, even more perfect than the original One.

Or consider the Hegelian notion of Pure Being as "nothingness", as a the "pure immediacy of experience", and this world as the negation of the Absolute. The mystic would have us retrace our steps to the Thesis, to what was the original womb, a kind of anxious clinging to our metaphysical nest.

The initiate of the Mysteries, the magician, the Gnostic, the Hermeticist, would rather negate the negation and create something entirely new. See, the One is always driving towards perfection, and a One that radiates an eternally imperfect Becoming is less perfect than a One that radiates a Becoming in which its component parts retain their individuation but still comprise a harmonious unity.

I think Kellhus is kind of like an autist. He's got a great grasp of this stuff but he can't see through to the Whole that necessarily condition the Parts. Mimara is a woman, has a soul, a real heart, and she can. 

Ah, I like distinguishing the different paths.I agree Kellhus is lesser evaluation of Gnosticism, identifying with the transcendent/alien part of the God whereas Mimara is more toward the immanent, panentheistic aspect.

This essay on Gnosticism and the X-men captures Kellhus perfectly in this passage:

Quote

The imagination of the traditional Christian, for example, conceives of an ascent to heaven that would transport the individual to a blissfully happy place; we still recognize personalities, however happy, in Dante. Gnosticism, by contrast, speaks of the afterlife as the re-integration of the Gnostic spark with the divine, shedding the shell of both the body and the psyche. It is difficult to picture what would be left. The Matrix, Gnostic in its cosmology, could have been Gnostic in its "psychology" as well: Morpheus may have gotten Neo out of the illusory prison the Machines built to trap us, but can he get him out of the love he has for Trinity? A fully Gnostic director could conceive of his love for her as occurring on the level of the psyche, as another trap created by the Archons to keep him from waking up to realize his own power, his Gnostic spark.[6] These examples show that recognizing such a distinction has radical consequences, particularly when we use it to question existing conceptions of the Post-Human.

Seems to fit in well with how Kellhus sees himself and the Dunyain, as vessels best suited to the God's purpose. Of course this could just be an ego-trap of the Dunyain, as Mimara does see their insane hunger as evil and thus falling into the trap of the Archons. It doesn't lead to God at all, rather it puts one in the hands of the very jailers the Inchies want to escape.

One issue with placing hope in Mimara's experience w/ the Chorae is the idea of love as another part of the Archons' trap does parallel Kellhus learning that Love and Courage are just as much meat for the Sons as any sinful characteristic.

The counter is that the God experienced through the Chorae seems to represent a different kind of love than the supposed "trap" of passion - Hindu mystics would distinguish love for other humans with the Sublime - love for creation in its entirety.

OTOH, as per your post, perhaps for Mimara love for one person - her baby - is the channel she follows back to the God. Maybe the key is the love for another, like one's own child, is the window that opens into the Sublime? 

 

[Baztek]

6 minutes ago, Sci-2 said:

Ah, I like distinguishing the different paths.I agree Kellhus is lesser evaluation of Gnosticism, identifying with the transcendent/alien part of the God whereas Mimara is more toward the immanent, panentheistic aspect.

This essay on Gnosticism and the X-men captures Kellhus perfectly in this passage:

Seems to fit in well with how Kellhus sees himself and the Dunyain, as vessels best suited to the God's purpose. Of course this could just be an ego-trap of the Dunyain, as Mimara does see their insane hunger as evil and thus falling into the trap of the Archons. It doesn't lead to God at all, rather it puts one in the hands of the very jailers the Inchies want to escape.

One issue with placing hope in Mimara's experience w/ the Chorae is the idea of love as another part of the Archons' trap does parallel Kellhus learning that Love and Courage are just as much meat for the Sons as any sinful characteristic.

The counter is that the God experienced through the Chorae seems to represent a different kind of love than the supposed "trap" of passion - Hindu mystics would distinguish love for other humans with the Sublime - love for creation in its entirety.

OTOH, as per your post, perhaps for Mimara love for one person - her baby - is the channel she follows back to the God. Maybe the key is the love for another, like one's own child, is the window that opens into the Sublime? 

 

Kellhus is the hunger for the Absolute, "the desire for enlightenment", with none of the soul/the actual person behind all that thinking and calculating, to be reintegrated into the Absolute in the first place. I think with Kellhus, Bakker is saying: "thinking of God does violence to God", nevermind all the plebs who blindly following their faith, but even when one orients their whole being towards grasping the Absolute, you can still fuck up. "The path of the sage is difficult, like walking the edge of a razor" and all that. Kellhus is all letter of the law, without the spirit. 

I don't think Kellhus is necessarily learning that love is just meat but seeing that, there, in the Outside, all the talk of salvation and divine love back in Earwa turn out to just be meat for the Sons, and not Love actually being nothing but meat in the truest sense. 

In the mysteries, all operations that are conducive to experiencing the divine are performed with complete detachment and not the slightest emotional investment. Anything less pollutes the action with more relativities, with exactly the mental phenomenology one is trying to transcend and conquer in the first place. The Dunyain breed for thousands of years to grasp God, and all you get is a guy whose hyper-alert to everything. Mimara suffers a bit, loves a bit, and bam, without even trying, she sees a true Tear of God. 

Love isn't a gnostic trap - as long as it's the love of a true God, an objective, unconditional love that isn't effusive or doting. A love from a transcendent vantage and not the sickly cloying love you see down here in the trenches.