What is “true” spirituality?

Talking about all this Manson stuff has triggered a chain of explosions, so many that it’ [...]

But rarely do we hear tales of the anti-Bodhisattva who transcends the control system, only to become it.

Actually, I think this sort of thing happens all the time. It may be the rare (counter)initiate who chooses compassion over power. I’m not really sure about that, but I see plenty of evidence of super(trans?)natural awareness in service of narcissistic power. But I also see plenty of humble, every-day kindness.

Perhaps the difference between initiation and counter-initiation is less one of knowledge itself than of the ends to which it is put into service. Again, I don’t really know.

It’s hard for me to get really intellectual about whether gnosis is innately positive or neutral. Most of us who are exchanging ideas here already understand that “good” and “evil” are concepts that apply only in the realm of subjective human experience, not in any absolute sense. However, there is an experiential aspect of gnosis that does not lend itself to debate in a rational/linguistic arena. In my experience, I can’t imagine a gnosis without the empathy and compassion that comes out of a profound awareness of the oneness of all consciousness and the suffering of all incarnate beings. But who knows, maybe I’m just too lowly and unevolved to see beyond it. Not sure that I would want to arrive at a point where I could no longer comprehend another’s suffering.

So in someways you can begin to envision a day when empathy and random, unconditional heroism, person to person, that’s not fit to be run on the evening news becomes suspect behavior, hence potentially, a crime against the system….Therefore, any lone superhero that would jump to the aid of a kitten in a tree or to a contract worker about to get beheaded, becomes one who elucidates a flaw in the system — and is thus a criminal.

Reminds me of Tuttle in Brazil. Not that’s a 1980s movie worth watching in 2005!

pretty much all the great teachers say that the closest thing to true evil is to know the truth fully and then turn away from it.

If you strip the concept of character of the superhero from Batman, he really is more Manson-like than a Batman fan would want to admit. If in only their shared human mortality. Batman is like a sex-free Zorro. He’s heroic, on the little guy’s side and totally, empathic when it comes to the lure of evil and its power. But again, possesses no superhuman traits. Like Manson. Like the Gnostic interpretation of Jesus. (correct me if I’m wrong on the Jesus bit!)

I guess the question to me is: If you’re fighting for justice you best keep abreast of what the populous you’re presumedly serving condsider justice as well. Manson, if you look at the evolution of certain subcultures and their multisensational symbols, has indeed already become something of a wispy, occultic popcult-ure superhero. Batman, I dare say, is a superhero who’s day has finally dovetailed with the technology of his future. The future is here. If there are Mansons in this world and have been for some time, who then and where, are the batmyn? The microfibers and miniaturized complex tech are waiting.

The deal in Iraq is a perfect example of evil poured out upon a hyper-surreal-macro level that somehow, unfortunately, has not registered with the frightened and unhappy people of Gotham. Who or what do the people consider themselves to be a larger part of, sans their status as Gothamites or Americans what have you? When it comes to evil, why is there such a disconnect between what happens because the authorities said it had to be so and what happens when some (non)random desperate hero/anti-hero (read: “criminal”) makes a system dwelling automaton uncomfortable? A crime’s a crime right? And yet the disconnect exists. The system commits no errors.

So in someways you can begin to envision a day when empathy and random, unconditional heroism, person to person, that’s not fit to be run on the evening news becomes suspect behavior, hence potentially, a crime against the system. If the system creates an evil that can eclipse all known random acts of human depravity, what then becomes both the victim and executor with, I cringe to point out, almost unlimited powers of reinventing itself both backward and forward in time? You guessed it, The System. Therefore, any lone superhero that would jump to the aid of a kitten in a tree or to a contract worker about to get beheaded, becomes one who elucidates a flaw in the system — and is thus a criminal.

Oh my mind is swimming right now. I’ll leave it at that. . . ; )

Charlie is a mirror, he’s like a fusion of freaky opposites, Albert Einstein with a Hitler mustache, Nixon in an Elvis Costume, norman mailer’s white negro, etc etc.

Maybe even Simon Magus falling from the sky and breaking his legs

Its true he could never make it on the outside

But to me what makes him interesting is not the scariness (I don’t find him scary) but the unihibitedness, the way he appears to have completely given himself over to something that is larger than he is, he sings and dances and plays with it and just doesn’t give a shit - The guy provokes intense cognitive dissonance just by existing

It may all be a con, who knows, with someone like that you can never tell

his interview with Geraldo Rivera was and still is one of the funniest fucking things I’ve ever seen

Geraldo asks “So are you a monster or just a misunderstood madman?”

I mean, c’mon. REALLY, c’mon. What Charlie’s answer is at that point almost doesn’t even matter. Just to be there and be asked idiotic questions like that is almost enough. He doesn’t even have to say anything. So instead he starts rapping like he thinks he’s Scatman Crothers at a spoken word night :

“roop de scoo, bop shoo mop,” etc and doing this freaking popping and locking like he’s in breakin’ 2 electric boogaloo.

50,000 Americans died in the Vietnam war, BTW, and millions of Vietnamese.

Charles Manson killed 1 person. That makes him the big villain of the 60s?

Hmm……

Remind never to become the symbolic embodiment of the public’s ambiguous take on some super-passionate controversy. It must be a terrible thing.

‘my platform is: get with the program or be destroyed’

No. it’s quite evident that he’s supposed to be the posterboy for the dangers of stepping outside the daddy-consensus.

two thousand years ago manson would’ve been the perfect warrior/shaman/chieftain of some marauding horde of barbarians, a shining example of initiation to his people. Now though, he just aint got the skills to cope…

What if Jesus had rejected Satan’s temptation and then just stayed in the widerness anyway? Not for 40 days and nights but forever.

What if he discovered he had more in common with the wild animals than people?

Disclaimer: the mark of an educated mind is being able to enterian an idea without accepting it, etc.

“You are going to run into this character starts going round and round and round and they say “The helicopter’s going to cra-ash, it’s going to cra-ash” and you’re looking for a helicopter action. What the hell it’s R6 boy and nothin’ else. And I don’t know, I think for about a day or two it takes this helicopter to crash in R6. Err, there’s no helicopter there, the guy’s frozen in alcohol and glycol, and sitting in a block, being given a big 3D Cecil B. De Milles special motion picture.”

we can pick this apart and decipher it. in the space of a few words el ron seems to undergo a number of mental ‘polarity shifts’. he’s probably playing sort of a game with himself and his audience, and he’s obviously lost in the game. you could probably even interpret it, let’s say as a sort of a sermon against negative thinking, mixed up with some unprocessed war memories. its significant in all sorts of ways, symbolically, culturally etc. but is there anything of intrinsic spiritual value here? i dont think so, i think el ron was, like charlie, just totally batshit nuts.

Is gnosis/enlightenment a neutral experience?

I think gnosis, for all its uniqueness, is akin to any other experience. In other words, yes, it is neutral. How you apply your gnosis is what determines its good/evil, usefull/useless, positive/negative.

But then you have to grapple with the idea of what gnosis reveals to you. Does it reveal the complete arbitrariness and pointlessness of human existence? Does it render “conventional” morality meaningless? Does it imply that the only true meaning is love and compassion for others?

There are a lot of reactions and interpretations of gnosis. And it begs the question of how do you know you have “authentic” gnosis as opposed to your interpretation of it? It engenders the question of what is “ultimate meaning” and whether gnosis, or false gnosis, moves you further along that path or away from it.

The separation between Batman and Joker is slim, see Moore’s The Killing Joke, the difference being when faced with “true” understanding of reality [in comics at least] Batman chooses compassion and love, whereas Joker embraces chaos and indivuality. The appeal of Batman, I think, is unlike other “heroes” he doesn’t ignore the darkness, or pretend it doesn’t exist, but assumes aspects of it.

But then you have to question whether the dualities presented by such examples are false dualities… which again comes back to the issue of ultimate meaning, morality and significance.

Does Manson’s choice to embrace “evil” mean anything beyond this particular realm of reality or interpretation of the facts? If not, is this representative of anything?

Does gnosis reveal the ultimate meaningless of the human experience or does it show the inherent “goodness” of those human traits - compassion, love, altruism - that we hold as ideal?

And does our interpretation of gnosis, like any experience, say more about ourselves than the experience itself?

Solipsism is a bitch…

But whatever truth you start with, whether your Bruce Wayne, Charles Manson, or Tom Cruise, there will always be the Enemy. Them. An Evil of some sort.

Thus, I will posit that evil does not exist except in reference to yourself and the biases of belief and relativism one takes on.

but yeah I totally believe it’s possible to take the anti-bohdisattva move. pretty much all the great teachers say that the closest thing to true evil is to know the truth fully and then turn away from it.

so on the one hand it sucks that there are real supervillains out there, but on the other hand it’s a blessing because where would superheores like us be without them, eh Tim?

I’d have to say batman is a major favorite, but I feel like I lean more towards doc savage or the shadow. those pulp motherfuckers don’t take shit from anyone