O
nihil incognitum!
(Angela
of Foligno, in ecstasy on her
deathbed)
We must give the French
philosophers of the 20th century the credit of
taking an important step forward in the history of thought and
consciousness. They took the new insights of Friedrich Nietzsche to its
extreme and developed a totally new and unheard of philosophy:
postmodernism. Crucial in the development of this new philosophy is the
work of Georges Bataille (1897-1962). This French philosopher combined
his study of Nietzsche with his findings as an ethnologist (especially
the work he had done in studying the sacred in different cultures) and
developed a metaphysics and an epistemology, that were centered around
mystical concepts as nihil,
emptiness, darkness, the void. So it seems
that with Bataille we see philosophy taking the leap to mysticism. But
this leap was (and still is to this day) not unproblematic, both with
other postmodern philosophers in the era after Nietzsche, as with
Bataille himself, who also showed a philosophical uneasiness in having
to take this leap and never fully came to terms with all of the
implications of mysticism.
So this article will center
around this uneasiness. For it seems to be
the crucial wave in the thought of Bataille. If we can get a clear grip
on it and come to understand what this uneasiness is about and what the
philosophical problem is in the first place, we might tackle two
important issues: first: we might come to a better understanding of
Bataille, the thinker (which can be of some use, because to many
readers Bataille is quite a puzzling writer), and second: we might
explore also the boundaries and the no-man's land between philosophy
and
mysticism. This exploration might best be achieved if we contrast the
findings of Bataille with the insights of mysticism. For the sake of
argument, to shed some light on the problem, these latter insights will
here be presented in a radical - a ´hard core´- way, which
might give the impression that mysticism has dogma´s of its own
too, that can be lined up against other theories. This is not the case.
Mysticism is not a theology. It is in fact a very practical science.
But this science has offered some tests and results that can be
compared -in the guise of criticism- to the ideas of Georges Bataille.
Let it be our hope that both Bataille and mysticism will benefit from
this comparison.
Bataille´s great role
model, Friedrich Nietzsche, had shown the
relativity of knowledge. Knowledge to him was only ´true´
in as far as it was useful for an individual or a particular group at a
certain point in time. When in the course of history a more useful set
of knowledge presented itself, the older one was dismissed and
supplanted. In Nietzsche´s view knowledge was only true for the
time being, despite the lofty and sanctified claims the old
philosophers had given to their mental constructions. They would gladly
have
seen their edifices everlasting and resistant to the storms of time,
but their claim to the immortality of truth was dishonest and childish.
Theirs was only one perspective out of many. They forgot to ask the
most important question: ´why have I chosen this one perspective
instead of another?´ Nietzsche came up with the answer:
´because this perspective gives me the greatest amount of rest
and certainty, given the cognitive limitations I have at this moment in
time´.
Bataille took this
epistemological skepticism to its extreme. He dared
to profess what the implications of Nietzsche´s philosophy were.
For it not only implied the death of God, but the death of his own
profession, of philosophy, also. If there is no permanent and absolute
meaning to be found in the inner and outer world, then all
philosophical statements are ´false´ in as far as they are
provisional. It is like the Buddha said: all form is empty. All the
constructions we make, be they material, mental, emotional or
spiritual, are nothing but empty epiphenomena on an ever receding world
of darkness that can never be grasped by the limitations of our
thinking. We think we know something but this is only what Bataille
used to call ´escape´. We are lured away from the
fundamental unknowability of the world into thinking that somewhere
there must be an epistemological anchor that connects us to the true
reality that we are and where we live in.
These radical views about
thought and meaning have their bearings upon
the writings and the style of Bataille. He never seems to make a claim.
His sentences are never propositional, but always tentative and
probing. He is hard to pin down to definite philosophical views and
statements. He seems to suggest that he wants to avoid presenting a
philosophy of his own. Because in that case he would have succumbed to
´the escape´. But does this imply that his books are devoid
of depth and richness? Are they obscure to the point of tediousness?
No. In fact his books are very beautiful and profound, with an immense
richness that discloses itself on second and third reading. This is
because the lack of argumentation (again: ´escape´) is
compensated by the beauty of their poetry.
An evolutionary mystic like
Aurobindo would have pointed to the fact
that this shift from an argumentative to a poetical style is in the
nature of things. He would have said that, when a person like Bataille
is confronted with the limitations of the mental and evolves to higher,
more subtle, levels of inner development, the style also changes. That
person´s thinking now becomes polylogical, paradoxical, poetical.
Words are no longer used in a one to one relation, but are more like
dye on canvas: they want to hint at something deeper, something
mysterious, that always escapes the eye and the mind of the
philosopher, but seems to be there all the same. This can only be done
in outlines and adumbrations. Because this mystery escapes all knowing.
It can only be perceived by the soul as an atmosphere of the inner
perception. It is reality perceived at a deeper level, beyond the realm
of words and arguments.
This is according to Bataille
what the poet and the philosopher of the
inner experience have in common. They both use the known the reach the
unknown. They want to take the reader to the very limits of the
possible, into ´the impossible´. This made Bataille very
uneasy and also bored with philosophical discourse because the only
result discursive thought could offer was to ´chop up´ the
world in digestible fragments. But it never reached the inner
experience of the world. But neither did poetry. Because poetry was
still dependent upon words. So we find sentences in Bataille like
´I could have said.... but that bores me´ where he warns us
that words have a tendency to become authoritative, despite the fact
that they never reach the truth. The factuality of words and thoughts
give the impression that they have reality and must be true for that
reason.
Fear
Even the religious believer who
is willing to accept God as an
ultimate negation tries to escape from the inner experience by making
mental constructions, be it consciously or unconsciously. For in a very
subtle way a tendency, a goal, slips into the mind and will, which
Bataille very pregnantly calls ´the plan´. ´The
plan´ still implies that we know something. We confess
ourselves to be heading towards something, which we strongly believe to
be happening in the future. All spiritual askesis is aimed at realizing
this plan. Askesis believes that, if we deny certain things and certain
behavior, that surely something will happen at a certain moment in time
like salvation, redemption, moksha, a happy afterlife, eternal bliss.
We are so used to living in expectation (and expectation is nothing but
a mental construction) that we fail to see that the inner experience is
beyond expectation.
But what does it mean: there is
nothing to expect, nothing to
construct, nothing to hope for? It can only mean that a radical nihil
gives you a tremendous blow against your head. There you sit at your
desk or on the couch and suddenly you realize -you are willing to
realize- that all your belief is but a mental construction. This makes
you close your eyes in despair. A cold shudder shakes your limbs. A
forlorn groan and a fierce shrieking escape your throat. Fear seizes
you and rifts your soul apart like an earthquake. This is the way the
inner experience presents itself. It breaks through in tremendous fear.
Fear is the feeling that presents itself when we let go of what we
think we know and what we are used to know. It is our ticket to
no-man's land.
In fear we fall into the deep abyss of the nothingness that we are. In
fear we realize that our life is but a cul-du-sac, where everything we
do or plan meets a dead end. Fear leaves us totally naked.
Supplication
Bataille confesses the inner
experience to be a torture. In French he
plays with the double meaning of ´going down on your
knees´. The French word ´supplice´ (from the Latin
´supplicare´ which means ´to bend your knees´)
connotates both a person who is forced to go down on his knees in
punishment and torture as well as someone who bids for mercy. To
Bataille the inner experience is both a torture, where we have to
render
account for our Promethean arrogance of knowing, as well as a cry for
mercy. For in the deepest fear and torture of the waste land of our
inner life a little voice begins to cry for help and beg for mercy. The
torture is at the same time a supplication. We reach out our hands.
.... For what? Some mystics
would say ´for God´. But to
Bataille this again is the treacherous voice of Prometheus bringing us
the light of knowledge. If we accept this answer we would again have
succumbed to ´the escape´. We would not be honest. And what
is worse still: we would have killed the inner experience itself by
professing to know in a region where we do not know. We reach out our
hands. But we don´t know ´whence cometh our succour´.
So all that is left is a deep despair and the ending of all hope. In
this torture we are being denuded from our self, from our
individuality, from our being human, aye, from our very being in the
world.
Ecstasy
In this
´denudation´ of everything we think we are, we are
finally forced to step out of ourselves. The fear forces us to. The
step into the unknown takes place. The ecstasy happens. It is the
sacrifice of the mental that provokes this our ecstasy. For we
only
exist to ourselves as an ideation. When this ideation is sacrificed in
the fire of our suffering and our fear, we finally make the step. Then
the communion with life is established. Then the laughter breaks us
free. But this final freedom can only happen in the Dark Night of our
supplication. There is no ecstasy without fear, torture and
supplication.
As a very tangible real but
also shocking example of this relation
between fear, supplication and ecstasy Bataille used to carry
photographs of a tortured Chinese in his wallet, which daily reminded
him of the connection between fear, suffering and ecstasy. The Chinaman
was captured in the Boxer-war (1898-1900). In torture the extremities
of his body were cut off and his flesh was literally cut to pieces. But
the surprising thing about these photo´s were the face and the
eyes
of the poor man. His face shone brightly with laughter and his eyes
were aflame with ecstasy and happiness. Bataille did not treasure these
photographs - in his poetical style he called the man ´beautiful
as a wasp´- out of perversion or sadism, but because he felt them
to be very consoling and comforting. These pictures showed the paradox
of life: there is ecstasy to be found in what we fear the most.
explanation (practical
mysticism): that fear and depression are
necessary preliminaries to spiritual ecstasy can also be explained when
we look at the physiology of mysticism. For when the kenosis, the
emptying of the mind of all content, takes place, the immediate
reaction of the body/mind structure is relief, relaxation and
destressing. Now finally the structure can come to rest, because the
mental stops interfering with the autonomous kathartic energies the
body has at its disposal. This means that in the kenosis hinted at by
Bataille the parasympathetic branch of our nervous system becomes
highly
activated. But the initial psychological effect of such a
parasympathetic
activation is not bliss and ecstasy but its counterpart, fear. Because
now at this first stage all the repressed emotions lying dormant in the
dark of our subconsciousness are made conscious by this parasympathetic
activation. For the destressing of our nervous system is initially a
clean up job. In the kenosis the system is afforded time and space to
heal its wounds. Psychologically this clean up presents itself as fear,
because all the repressed emotions are now being re-lived and re-felt
again. This is nothing but becoming conscious what formerly was held
unconscious. But our initial psychological response to this process is
fear, because our conscious mind resists the suspension of the
repression mechanism.
Fear is the spontaneous
reaction of consciousness to what is
psychologically unwelcome and detrimental to its health. Fear is the
dynamic of repression itself. But the mystic knows that he has to
resist this impulse if he wants ecstasy to happen. For when the fear
and depression subsides the laughter and the tears of ecstasy break
free. This happens with the aid of the higher spiritual energies
consciousness has at its disposal. The fear and depression are overcome
by counter dynamics which we call spiritual and which belong to the
higher levels of the psyche. They are felt as helping and protecting
´from above´ the struggle that takes place
´below´. The setting in motion and the ´wake up
call´ of these counter dynamics in the soul is what Bataille
referred to as ´the supplication´. So practical mysticism
also acknowledges this triad of fear, supplication and ecstasy.
explanation (theoretical
Berdyaev mysticism): Nikolai Berdyaev explains
that the kenosis may have two diametrically opposed effects. The person
who is shocked out of his beliefs, ideas and expectations (who is
forced to abandon ´the plan´) by something disastrous
happening to him, like the loss of something precious eg. in
divorce or mourning, may fall into what he calls the ´abyss
below´. This ´abyss below´ is the meaningless void of
madness, fear and psychosis, where a person gets totally lost in dark
forces overclouding him (the prerational, ´the Devouring
Mother´). The abyss devours him. This happens when a person
enters the abyss totally unprepared, with little awareness about the
fundamental emptiness of life. He only sinks further and further away
into it, without gaining anything. Then all is lost. Not the gates of
heaven but the gates of the asylum open up for him.
But in the opposite case the
kenosis may also have an upward pull. This
is likely to happen when a person enters prepared and with full
knowledge (in the sense of Bataille´s ´knowing of
not-knowing´) into the Void. Then he enters what Berdyaev calls
´the abyss above´. This happens to the mystic who prepares
himself to fall, who enters fully conscious into the Void, with trust
and surrender, without resisting and fighting his way back. Such a
person is mysteriously lifted up from falling by benevolent spiritual
forces working in him. Spiritual sentences like ´Thy will be
done´ and ´in Thy hands I command my spirit´ at this
moment present themselves. They are nothing but the acceptance of this
upward pull to ´the abyss above´. Trust and faith are
important for this to happen. The upward pull is very real and not in
the least imaginary. But this pull has to be recognized and accepted.
Otherwise it will not present itself . Then the falling continues and
all is lost.
So the variable seems to be
awareness. One has to remain
fully
conscious when falling into the Void. When we become unaware, all may
be lost. It´s like walking on a razor´s edge. The fear may
deteriorate into psychosis. The fear may force us to become unaware. We
might once again want to escape from the Void by putting trust in the
plan. That´s why ´the supplication´, the imploration,
is so important when we contact Emptiness. It keeps us alert and fully
conscious. And it prevents us taking up a new plan, by acknowledging
the fact that we can do nothing to drive away the fear and to provoke
the ecstasy. Ecstasy cannot be planned. Happiness can never be an
object.
the
ipse-being
According to Bataille the
greatest philosophical misconception rampant
in the world is the idea that being can be isolated, autonomous. The
obvious fact that being is always ´being in context´,
´being in communion´, escapes us the most. We ignorantly
perceive ourselves to be beings on our own, ´ipse-beings´,
who are in combat with the world we live in. We want this isolation to
end, because subconsciously we feel that it is unnatural for a being to
be a ipse-being. The ipse-being is contra
naturam. To annihilate this
unnatural isolation we strive with the power and the exploitation of
our knowledge to be the all and everything. But this is exactly what
makes us so tragic. Because an ipse-being can never be the all. It is a
contradictio in terminis. When
this finally, in the honesty of the
torture of the inner experience, dawns on the ipse-being, he becomes
upset with a tremendous fear. Finally he has to concede that he cannot
be the all and that his attempts at knowing the all are futile. The
fear rises because he has to admit that he knows nothing:
This ipse-being, itself
compound in different parts and as such a
result, an unforeseen coincidence, enters the universe with a will to
autonomy. It is compound, but still it tries to dominate. Pursued by
fear it yields to the desire to subjugate the world under its autonomy.
The ipse-being, this minuscule little part, this unforeseen and purely
improbable coincidence, is condemned to wanting to be different: to be
all/everything and necessary. (....) But this will to being a universe
is simply a ridiculous challenge to unknowable infinity. Infinity
escapes all knowledge. It escapes always the eyes of a being that is
looking for it, by escaping the improbability it is (....). (the
Inner Experience p. 118)
So the ipse-being itself
prevents itself from being the all by being an
ipse-being. This is the tragic adabsurdum
paradox of its
being-in-the-world. Only in the sacrifice of itself can the ipse-being
cross the boundaries of its own limitations. But in doing so it
generates the tremendous fear of its own destruction. That´s
according to Bataille one of the reason that in ritual a substitute
sacrifice was introduced, because the fear of self-sacrifice in the
face of the sacred became too much to bear.
Communion/communication
The pull of all existence is
towards the sacred. In the
sacred the
original and natural communion of all being is felt to be present
without alloy. Life wants to merge into life, because it intuits
its own transtemporal unity. This unity it finds again in the sacred.
So what I want as an individual and what we want as a global community
is the same thing: our heart yearns for the sacred. We want the
suspension of the ipse-being in the communion the sacred re-enacts.
Bataille has explored a number
of means for establishing such a
connection. It is noteworthy that his philosophical interest is not so
much in worship, liturgy, communal prayer or other spiritual mechanisms
that
could provide us with tools for reaching the sacred. These more
classical means all have their shortcomings because they all have
´the plan´ as their central constituent. They are all too
much centered in power, whether exercised by the ipse-being itself or
by the group (also an ipse-being). They are all too manipulative and
tend to reinforce the hierarchy they are meant to destroy. These
classical means do not destroy the shell of separate being. Bataille is
looking for more direct ways of establishing a mysticism of communion:
I.
intellectual kenosis
II. objects without
content
Objects without a specific
meaning can be used as means to take us out
of the tyranny of the discursive, like concentrating on our breath or
repetition of words without any intellectual meaning, like the word
'silence'. These words or atmospheres make us glide from the external
level of gross objects into the interiority of the subject.
III.
the mysticism of eroticism
In erotic communication a deep
connection is established. In the
embrace of the lovers the seeming separateness of our individual being
is for a while suspended and lifted. The orgasm resembles the fear in
that the orgasm also makes us slide away into the abyss of Emptiness.
For a moment our being-in-the-world is suspended. We cross the limits
of our existence. In this dark no-man's land the lovers merge into one.
The sexual orgasm, like the fear, provokes the ecstasy that evokes the
sacred. The ek-stasis takes place. We step out of ourselves. Subject
and object wipe out each other´s existence.
To Bataille erotic
communication was sacred communication. He did not
believe that traditional askesis, and a
fortiori sexual askesis, was a
mean to reconnect us to the sacred. His was a mysticism of profusion,
not a mysticism of limitation, because to him life and creation were
profuse and not limited. He believed that our hunger for objects could
only be killed by fatigue. So his askesis is more like an anti-askesis
(like his philosophy is an anti-philosophy), were the objects
themselves serve as a mean for extirpating the craving for objects:
He who does not know about
eroticism is no less a stranger for the end
of the possible than he who is without inner experience. One has to
choose the difficult, the rough way- that of ´the whole
human´, of the one not crippled. (the Inner Experience p. 49)
There is a strange, mysterious
and irresistible force in eroticism.
When our consciousness focuses in on the atmosphere (the images, the
feelings, the fantasy) of the erotic, both in waking time reality as
in the world of dreams, it swoons in the vertigo of its own suspension.
All knowing of the mind is relegated to the background. Consciousness
becomes concentrated at this one point fixation. The eyes are whirled
into the vortex of the mystical genitals. In the experience of the
erotic there is no place on earth where God seems to be more
concentrated. The erotic is the Point. The genitals, the embrace, the
kisses are the epitome of all life force. Not a being in the world can
resist this mysterious attraction of the erotic, not even God herself.
The erotic is the black hole in our universe. All life is sucked
towards it. The erotic is the sacred. In the erotic the ipse-being
disintegrates.
criticism: Eroticism has the
power to disintegrate the ipse-being and
make him enter the realm of the sacred. But being a mysticism it
nevertheless offers a dangerous field of worship. It might be
contra productive to its goals. Let´s discuss a number of reasons
why eroticism can be ´dangerous´ for the mystical
experience.
1. In the first place the lust
and the pleasure in the erotic embrace
are so powerful that the subject may not transcend the subject-object
relation, but instead run the risk of reinforcing the duality, the
dichotomy. This happens when one of the partners or both partners
identify too strongly with their own ego-object or with their body and
its vital pleasures. With most people erotic consciousness only focuses
in on what arouses and what is aroused. Seldom, or maybe for a split
second, in the orgasm, it detaches from its object. But, as we saw, the
sacred is the field beyond the subject and the object. So only very few
people reach the sacred in the erotic embrace. They remain too much
identified with the object (whether with themselves as an object or
with the other).
2. Only impersonal eroticism
can be a mysticism. In marriage or in any
other long term relationship the eroticism becomes too personal, too
involved with the historical personality of the subject to become a
mysticism. In such a relationship the two partners become an ipse-being
on their own, excluding all, especially the sacred. For personal
eroticism strengthens the ipse-being, instead of dissolving it. So this
type of eroticism is contra productive to a mysticism of the sacred. It
may even be called its counterpart, because more and more it closes the
subject-object in on its self.
This is the reason why most
people tend to disagree with Bataille in
considering eroticism to be a mysticism. But they do so for the wrong
reasons. They only know their own personal eroticism, which has
forced them to surrender their freedom to the guardianship and
power of a supposedly benevolent other. This personal eroticism
has only seldom, and certainly not lately, brought them to experience
the sacred. The personality cannot dissolve anything, in the least
itself, into the slipping hand of receding time, but always wants to
keep and wants to possess. It fears its own destruction in the letting
go. So it clings desperately to what is familiar. To utter boredom and
with desperate yawning it performs the rut of its obligatory eroticism
in the face of open possibilities, that are paradoxically excluded by
the fearful ipse-being itself, so anxious of detaching itself into the
nihil. So every marriage ends up killing its own God.
Bataille was aware of the
dangers of personal eroticism. So he sought
sacred eroticism in the polyamory of his societies and in the anonymity
of Parisian brothel life. But because so few people shared his ideas of
an impersonal eroticism and also because there are few religious
brothels to be found in the world (even in Paris), he at last became
disappointed with the possibilities of eroticism. The world is not
ready yet for an such impersonal eroticism, he sourly concluded, or, to
be more precise, it does not, for various reasons, confess itself to be
so.
3. If we consider the Chain of
Being as our guide for reaching the
sacred, we see that the body and its eroticism are located not on top
of the Chain but at the lower sports of the ladder. So the body and its
natural biology are not as purely ascended to the sacred as eg. the
soul is. In fact they are much more descended to the prima materia of
solid matter where the sacred hides Itself the most. So it may be
worthwhile to consider the possibility of eroticism not reconnecting us
to the
divine but to this prima materia instead.
Then eroticism would be, or
entails the danger to be, in Freudian terms, a form of ´uroboric
incest´. In indulging in eroticism we might then fall into forms
of infantile regression (like eg. the oral gratification of nipple
sucking etc. shows). Not ´the Void above´ is reached, but
we fall back instead into the dark abyss of ´the Devouring
Mother´ (the prima materia).
Such a view is plausible in the
light of the fact that our spirit feels exhausted rather than refreshed
after an erotic act.
In that case we might consider
the possibility that Bataille was caught
up in with Wilber calls ´the pre/trans fallacy´. Then
Bataille is right that there is freedom and dissolution to be found in
eroticism, but it would not be an ascendant dissolution into the
sacred. It would be a backward dissolution into the material. This
would explain the fact that eroticism can be addictive and detrimental
to one´s psychological health, while higher spiritual forms of
dissolution are seldom so. I only want to bring this up as a
possibility, because in defense of Bataille we must admit that such a
´pre/trans fallacy´ leaves the mysticism of eroticism,
which to a certain extent cannot be denied, unexplained.
IV.
the mysticism of laughter
Laughter deranges. It shakes us
out of our familiar notions and makes
us look at the world in a completely new way, by making or showing the
familiar absurd. When we laugh about the world or about ourselves or
when an other person makes us laugh, we for a moment experience the
liberating emptiness of our not-knowing. Right away we experience our
fundamental freedom. The laughter creates a vast open space, a place of
communion where the I and the you dissolve into one. We have become two
conspirators in laying bare the absurdity, the falseness, the
hypocrisy, the stupidness, the lack of honesty in most of our mental
constructions. Laughter makes one and reunites. So laughter is to
Bataille a way to lead us into the sacred.
The mental always looks for
certainty. It believes its own
constructions to be permanently true. The mind definitely thinks the
world so and so. But laughter, like a child rebelliously wiping her
jig-saw puzzle from the table, brings all our beliefs and our encrusted
notions to nought. They are made to seen for what they are: mere
bubbles
on the ocean of vast eternity. So laughter tempts the absolute and
shows us the relative. It right away pokes fun at people who are not
willing to accept their fundamental emptiness. To these people laughter
is the greatest enemy (an so are they to laughter). (I once read a
little story in the newspaper on how the Nazi´s had sent a
non-Jewish clown/magician to the gas chambers. In absolute regimes
laughter is declared taboo to the level of absurdity).
Bataille says the laughter
rolls like a wave from the center of culture
to its periphery, where it derides all the mediocrity and
insignificance of what lies outside to underscore its own value. So the
townsman is always making fun of the retard provincial, who to his
taste is lacking in the ways of the world and can only passively
respond to what comes from the center. Or the laughter rolls downwards
from the scale of hierarchy, where higher derides the lower. But like
the wave in the pond every laughter rolls back on itself and in the end
the center and the higher get what they deserve. They too are poked fun
at. What is the king without his fool or the fool without his king? The
politician loves his comedian, the comedian is in need of politicians.
They all want the communion of the sacred. In rituals of status
reversal the laughter is made to enact the sacred.
The Uneasiness
Now we come to the most central
question when considering the
philosophy of Georges Bataille: has postmodern philosophy in the figure
of Bataille made the leap from philosophy to mysticism? Jean-Paul
Sartre thought so he did and criticized him for it. But did he thought
so himself? At one place he said that he had followed st.
John-of-the-Cross´ method of ´self-starvation´ to its
very limits. This, and the rest of his insights, would certainly make
him a mystic. But there are many places in the Inner Experience and
Guilty to be found where he
expresses a severe criticism of mysticism.
It is good to focus in on these critical remarks. We mystics might
learn from it.
His greatest objection is the
fact that the mystics also cannot resist
the temptation of constructing a metaphysics, a mystical theology, out
of their inner experience. They also want to distil a knowledge from
what they think they have seen. They come up with grandiose claims that
they have become the One and the All. They have invented snorting words
like ´God´, ´redemption´ and
´enlightenment´ for what in its essence is just as fleeting
as any other experience.
The experience is putting
into
question (testing it out), in fever and
fear, of what a human being knows about the fact that he is. Whatever
the conception he may receive in this fever, he cannot say: ´this
is what I have seen, this is the way it was´; he cannot say:
´I have seen God, the Absolute or the Ground of the
worlds´. He can only say: ´what I have seen escapes all
knowing´ and God, the Absolute and the Ground of the worlds are
nothing whatsoever if they are no categories of understanding. (the
Inner Experience p. 28)
All ideas and conceptions like
´God´, ´the
Absolute´ are nothing but obstacles in our experience of the
unknown. They are in fact counter productive to the mystical
experience.
Again have we succumbed to the fear of the Void. Again has the violence
of the discursive won its battle. We have not been honest and brave
enough. The brave man can only stammer ´I do not know, I do not
know....`
The mystics themselves have
made all sorts of claims. They developed
the belief in an afterlife for the soul, its rebirth, its evolution in
time to higher levels of being. But our existence is just a coincidence
like any other coincidence in the universe (´man is nothing but
man´ says Bataille). And this our small life ´is rounded
with a sleep´, the meaningless Void enveloping this particle of
dust, this grain of sand, that would gladly see itself so important, so
´chosen´, within the universe. But all these dreams and
consolations are finally knocked down by the club of blind Time, who
laughs indifferently about all these stories of the mind when handing
out its final blow. The moment of our death erases everything. Not even
a faint echo of what we have been remains.
We can only cross the border to
the unknown, we can only find the
ecstasy, if we are willing to fight the temptation of knowing, says
Bataille. ´Now I know, because I have seen´ is the dagger
that kills the mystic we essentially are. We must resist this
temptation to kill. All theology becomes an authority. As an authority
it ends up in killing its own experience.
criticism: critics have called
this postmodern stance, with a
derogatory term, ´aperspectival madness´. But skepticism
and the willingness to postpone one´s judgment can hardly be
called a ´madness´. It rather appears to be a healthy
scientific attitude. But the criticism that aperspectivism is also a
perspectivism is, I believe, a sound one. The postmodernists would
retort that aperspectivism is not so much a perspectivism as well as an
anti-perspectivism. But this looks like a sophism and a jingling with
words. Anti-perspectivism is as any perspectivism a definite
philosophical outlook on how we view the world, namely that we cannot
have a definite philosophical view of the world and that we should try
to deconstruct any such view. This is the way the postmodernists view
the world. So it is some sort of a perspectivism. There seems to be a
kind of self-contradiction involved here.
To avoid endless regressions we
have to admit that our claim ´I
know nothing´ leaves us with some knowledge after all (now
´I know nothing´ has become our knowledge). This entails a
perspectival stance. But the postmodernist wants to avoid such a
stance. So he would be more true to his own premise if he would adhere
to some form of radical skepticism where he would also leave open the
possibility of having knowledge. Only in this midway stance (what
Chuang Tzu called ´the stance of the potters wheel´),
´we might know, we might not know´, can we truly postpone
our judgment. But in this radical skepticism the postmodernist should
have to admit that what the mystics say about ´God´ or
´moksha´ etc. might just as good be true. This Bataille is
reluctant to admit. If ´anything goes´, he seems to
suggest, that would be a kind of ´madness´, wouldn´t
it? So he opts for the not-knowing.
But it is a good thing to point
to the fact that other mystics did
believe in knowledge. They only used the kenosis and the aporia as a
mean to gain such knowledge about life, the world, about
´God´. For them the kenosis and the aporia were not the
final word. It was a method they used. They emptied the mind of all
content, in order that a higher form of knowledge might enter.
Higher
transpersonal knowledge
For it cannot be denied (and I
must admit that I have tried feverishly
to deny it, for just like Bataille I believe in the kenosis as a
powerful tool of mysticism), that the inner mystical experience leaves
us with some form of knowledge. For it belongs to the inner experience
itself that the ecstasy that is suscitated by mystical methods like
inner prayer and meditation has its repercussions on the lower levels
of the material, the vital and the
mental also. The ecstasy changes us,
not only chemically, materially, bodily, but it also changes our
knowledge, the way we view things. This new transpersonal knowledge
makes us steadfast and strong, certain of what we are and what we do,
without ever becoming dogmatic. Without this knowledge we would not
know how to act. Without this knowledge we would not acknowledge the
importance of philosophy and the practice of mysticism. We would never
be mystics. Without this knowledge we would not even adhere to an
anti-philosophy. For something in us must be certain of the fact that
it is not good to be certain.
What do I know? Let´s be
very honest here. I do not know whether
God or some god has created the worlds. I do not know if these worlds
are part of some Intelligent Design. It might as well all be blind
chance and contingency, as science tells us. If we see beauty in the
universe, it might just be our projecting our aesthetic pleasure onto
the screen of the world. I do not know whether God has a plan with this
world. Some say that the world is part of a spiritual evolution that
will in the end reunite us again with God. Others tell us that we are
heading for our final cataclysmic destruction, when all the worlds
again will dissolve into mere nothingness. All these things I do not
know. I do not know whether God steers my life. I have never heard
voices inside of my head. When I do hear them I tend to mistrust them.
I do not believe in the afterlife. Only some faint energy of me remains
when I die. But that energy is not me. This energy has for a while been
me. At least, that´s what I thought. But that ´me´
has
died already (even while alive).
But what I do know stems from
the inner experience. I know that when I
close my eyes in sincere not-knowing, I will begin to feel a life force
vibrating in me that brings me to ecstasy. I can only feel It when I am
not there, when my will, my memory and mind are in deep passivity. This
soon happens when I close my eyes. For it takes just a few seconds for
the truth to disclose itself: I
appear to be nothing. The me soon
disappears when I close my eyes. I´m just an object in my mind,
that falls away when the mind loses its activity. But this Force at the
bottom of my interiority remains, even when all the objects in my
consciousness have disappeared. This force cannot be wiped out. It
still remains when everything dies in me. But It cannot be known
either. For
It is not an object like me, like any other object. Only of objects can
we gain knowledge. But this life force is the deepest subjectivity of
this soul and this body.
This experience, being month
after month, year after year the same, has
such a tremendous impact, intellectually, emotionally, existentially,
on the working of my soul, body and brain, that I cannot deny that I
know this one thing for sure: the
Force is. And when I step out of the
way (for the Force is very shy and full of humility; likes to work from
the background and only acts when lower forces recede) It
instantaneously takes over control and begins to spread Its qualities
to the lower regions of my being, to my soul, my mind, my emotions, my
body. And these qualities are: an all powerful, world conquering love,
a tremendous strength, an internal discipline, that spontaneously
occurs because there is no failing of energies and a deep wisdom that
encompasses the whole universe. But the highest quality of all is love.
This I know to be the key quality of the Force. The Force is not
complex, but simple and open, full of trust and love.
I also know that the Force ends
all fear. What Bataille experienced,
that the ecstasy is always accompanied and provoked by fear, is only
the case in the beginning of our ascension of Monte Carmelo. Bataille
is still in this initial phase of purification, where the mystic is
besieged by excruciating tortures, because again he has to go through
all the pains and wounds he ever suffered in his life, now even in an
intensified way, because now these pains and wounds are experienced
internally, psychologically, not tempered or soothed by any mechanism
of repression. This phase is the deep groaning and screaming of hell,
the lacerating of cheeks. This is the loneliness and utter rejection
of Bataille´s existentialism.
But at the top of the Mountain
all fear subsides. It is because of the
Force. Now at the top the soul is free, empty, ecstatic, blissful. She
only experiences the Force now. This is the end of all suffering. Now
the mystic has become one with the life force. Now she has become the
One and All, but please note: it is not the person of the mystic, not
the ipse-being, that has become the One and All. It is the Force of the
mystic, her only true being, that now again is restored to the One It
always was and shall be. It is the final end of the ipse-being.
no-man's land between philosophy
and
mysticism. This exploration might best be achieved if we contrast the
findings of Bataille with the insights of mysticism. For the sake of
argument, to shed some light on the problem, these latter insights will
here be presented in a radical - a ´hard core´- way, which
might give the impression that mysticism has dogma´s of its own
too, that can be lined up against other theories. This is not the case.
Mysticism is not a theology. It is in fact a very practical science.
But this science has offered some tests and results that can be
compared -in the guise of criticism- to the ideas of Georges Bataille.
Let it be our hope that both Bataille and mysticism will benefit from
this comparison.
philosopher, but seems to be there all the same. This can only be done
in outlines and adumbrations. Because this mystery escapes all knowing.
It can only be perceived by the soul as an atmosphere of the inner
perception. It is reality perceived at a deeper level, beyond the realm
of words and arguments.
construction. This makes
you close your eyes in despair. A cold shudder shakes your limbs. A
forlorn groan and a fierce shrieking escape your throat. Fear seizes
you and rifts your soul apart like an earthquake. This is the way the
inner experience presents itself. It breaks through in tremendous fear.
Fear is the feeling that presents itself when we let go of what we
think we know and what we are used to know. It is our ticket to
no-man's land.
In fear we fall into the deep abyss of the nothingness that we are. In
fear we realize that our life is but a cul-du-sac, where everything we
do or plan meets a dead end. Fear leaves us totally naked. 
absurdum
paradox of its
being-in-the-world. Only in the sacrifice of itself can the ipse-being
cross the boundaries of its own limitations. But in doing so it
generates the tremendous fear of its own destruction. That´s
according to Bataille one of the reason that in ritual a substitute
sacrifice was introduced, because the fear of self-sacrifice in the
face of the sacred became too much to bear. 
even God herself.
The erotic is the black hole in our universe. All life is sucked
towards it. The erotic is the sacred. In the erotic the ipse-being
disintegrates.
