David Myatt - Prolegomenas to The Philosophy of The Numinous Way

For thousands of years, we human beings have been aware - or could discover, for ourselves - a certain wisdom, a particular conscious knowledge concerning our own nature.

From Aeschylus to Sophocles to Siddhārtha Gautama, from the mythos of the Μοῖραι [1] to the postulate of samsara, from the notion of Fate to the Sermon on the Mount, and beyond, we have had available to us an understanding of Δίκα [2]: of how we human beings are often balanced between honour and dishonour; balanced between ὕβρις and ἀρετή; between our animalistic desires, our passions, and our human ability to be noble, to achieve excellence; a balance manifest in our known ability to be able to control, to restrain, ourselves, and thus find and follow a middle way, of ἁρμονίη.

For several Aeons, this understanding, this middle way, was of two essential things. First, of how such a middle way enabled us to avoid causing or contributing to that suffering which our own πάθει μάθος - our learning from the sorrows of personal experience - informed us was unwise because contrary to the natural balance (the numinosity) that such πάθει μάθος intimately revealed to us. Second, of how this balance - this self control - was preferable for us, as individuals, since to upset this balance - for example to go beyond the limits established by our ancestral customs - was: (1) to invite a personal retribution (or misfortune) from the gods; or (2) to invite punishment from a supreme deity; or (3) condemn us to be reborn again and thus have to toil yet again to obtain reward (karma) enough to progress in accord with the bhavacakra.

As Sophocles wrote, over two thousand years ago - ὕβρις φυτεύει τύραννον [3]. That is, ὕβρις (hubris) plants the τύραννον, although the sense of τύραννος here is not exactly what our fairly modern term tyrant is commonly regarded as imputing. Rather, it refers to the intemperate person of excess who is so subsumed with some passion or aim or a lust for power that they go far beyond the due, the accepted, bounds of behaviour and thus exceed the limits of or misuse whatever authority they have been entrusted with. Thus do they, by their excess, by their disrespect for the customs of their ancestors, by their lack of reasoned, well-balanced, judgement [σωφρονεῖν] offend the gods, and thus, to restore the balance, do the Ἐρινύες take revenge. For it is in the nature of the τύραννος that they forget, or they scorn, the truth, the ancient wisdom, that their lives are subject to, guided by, Μοῖραι τρίμορφοι μνήμονές τ᾽ Ἐρινύες.

Λυκοῦργος and the Ἐρινύες
Apulian Red Figure vase, c. 330 BCE (Antikensammlungen, Munich, Germany)

Thus the knowledge that our pride, our arrogance, our uncontrolled desires, our lack of σωφρονεῖν, are the genesis of the disruption of the natural balance - both within ourselves, and exterior to ourselves.

The received wisdom was personal avoidance of the error of ὕβρις because we, we individuals and possibly our immediate family, would suffer: either in this life (by for example receiving bad luck, inviting misfortune, or having some tyrant foisted upon our community) or in some afterlife we believed in. Hence what we would now describe as ethical behaviour, for individuals - our control of our instincts, our desires - essentially derived from something supra-personal, such as ancestral customs, some belief in some gods, some faith in some supreme deity, or acceptance of some postulate such as karma or nirvana. In the terms of Christian theology, the belief being that we need to replace the guidance, the temptations, the guile, of The Infernal Serpent with the guidance, the love, of Christus Redemptor.

More recently, we human beings have committed a new kind of ὕβρις. Or more correctly perhaps, our ὕβρις has acquired a new form, new manifestations. That is, we have manufactured causal abstractions - ideals, ideas, -isms and -ologies - which we have identified with and/or striven to attain, both for ourselves, and for others; so that it has become apposite to write that causal abstractions are the genesis of suffering, for both ourselves, and for others. because such abstractions disrupt the natural balance of Life [ψυχή]: the life within us, within other sentient beings, and the Life that is presenced to us as Nature, leading thus to a loss of ἁρμονίη. This kind of ὕβρις also plants the τύραννος, but the impersonal kind of τύραννος that lives in the practical implementation of such abstractions, internally and externally - so that, for instance, we allow ourselves to become subjects of some -ism or some -ology (whether described as or deemed to be political, social, or religious) or we become actual subjects of some impersonal entity such as a State, controlled, constrained, by laws, taxation, and the ever-present threat of the use of force by the 'officially appointed' minions of such an entity, so that such an impersonal entity has, in all but name, usurped our older gods, our Μοῖραι, our God, our karma.

Thus, the reality now is often of either (1) obedience to the dictat of some entity such as The State, our government, or the mandates of some supra-national body such as the United Nations, because to dissent would render us liable to punishment; or (2) a belief in - an acceptance of - such entities as the provider of 'good fortune', of 'justice' [4], and of prosperity, for us and our family.

Here, the threat of exterior, practical, punishment - the always present threat of imprisonment, the use of force against us by such entities as the Police, and ultimately the armed forces - has largely replaced the interior threat we hitherto might have imposed upon ourselves by our acceptance of such things as retribution from the gods, or punishment from some supreme deity. That is, ethical behaviour, for individuals still essentially derives from something supra-personal involving an us and them, the others.

Despite these approaches, ancient and modern - that is, despite the ethical behaviour these two approaches encouraged and even demand, or tried to encourage - human beings, en masse, do not seem to have significantly changed. Thus, the world is still replete with individuals who cannot control their desires and who thus commit dishonourable deeds, the error of ὕβρις. For every minute of every day, year following year, human beings are murdered, brutalized, bullied, raped, injured, tortured, humiliated, abused - just as deception, theft, robbery, fraud, and malfeasance, occur with monotonous regularity.

The world is still rife with bloody murderous conflict, except that new causes of conflict have been added to the ancient ones of personal greed, personal dishonour, and the desires of some τύραννος or other. For the new entities that we have manufactured - such as nation-States - have themselves caused suffering, of a magnitude arguably greater than caused by some τύραννος and far greater than could be caused by individuals unable to control their dishonourable urges, their greed. For example, conflicts between the modern nation-States of the West, and internal conflict within such States, have resulted in the deaths of an estimated one hundred million human beings in just over a century [4].

Thus, it seems as if the ancient wisdom of Δίκα has remained the preserve of a minority, and thus that the accumulated πάθει μάθος of millennia - manifest in such things as literature, Art, music, ancestral culture, and spiritual Ways of Life - has little or no relevance for or been a significant influence upon the majority, even in those modern States which have had, for nigh on a century, compulsory education for children. [5]

Since murderous conflict, the error of ὕβρις, and a lack of reasoned judgement, and thus suffering, remain - despite a variety of middle ways over millennia to divert us from such things, and despite numerous individuals over millennia, in their own ways, understanding Amr bil Maroof wa Nahi anil Munkar [6] - it is perhaps pertinent to consider if there is, or might be, a better expression of that wisdom, that particular conscious knowledge, concerning our own nature and how we might find and express that balance which enables us to restrain ourselves and avoid the error of ὕβρις.

That is, is there a Way which does not mean or imply a belief in some ancient mythos, or demand of us some faith in some supreme deity and some afterlife, or involve us in obedience to some supra-personal entity whose authority ultimately derives from the threat or the use of force or acceptance of some suffering-causing -ism or -ology whose nature is enshrined in the cliché that the abstraction of happiness, the abstraction of the welfare, the abstraction of the security, the abstraction of the prosperity, of the majority is more important than the fate of some individuals, and that thus for such abstractions to be obtained, in some (mythical) future the suffering of some or even of many individuals is an 'acceptable price' to pay?

In brief, a Way which does not of necessity involve us in considering matters as we have hitherto almost invariably done: by whether or not we, as individuals, are rewarded or punished (in this life, or in some believed in afterlife). That is, which does not of necessity posit some personal abstraction for us to accept or believe in - be such an abstraction some personal prosperity or some peace (in this or some next life such as Heaven or Jannah), or some supreme deity, or some notion such as nirvana or even some mythos such as Μοῖραι τρίμορφοι μνήμονές τ᾽ Ἐρινύες.

For such things - and the middle ways derived from them in the past - are, correctly appreciated and thence understood, only pointers toward a deeper truth, which is that of the error of the self, and an error revealed by the nature of the causality implicit in this individual desire to seek some reward and avoid punishment, or, in Buddhism, avoid the periodicity of samsara.

Even in Buddhism, where this truth concerning the self has been dis-covered, revealed, in a rather rational manner, the practical reality for the majority is of individual striving, and the assumption of a goal for individuals. Hence the reason of the individual doing what they do - meditation, giving alms, striving to avoid causing suffering, for example - because they themselves seek liberation, nirvana; because they are concerned about their karma. Thus there is still a judgement based on the concept of individual reward. Hence, also, the striving for a posited goal, a striving exemplified by the bhavacakra.

The error of the self is the error of a simple cause-and-effect predicated on the separation of living beings and upon a separate goal which the separated individual could attain by a given causal process.

Thus, and for example in Buddhism, the goal is nirvana and the process the Eight-Fold Path; in Christianity the goal is Heaven and the process is acceptance of Christus Redemptor; in Islam the goal is Jannah and the process is complete submission to Allah (and acceptance of Quran, Sunnah, and Shariah); in Hellenic culture the goal was ἀρετή (and thence a good place in Hades) by means such as avoidance of ὕβρις. In modern times, for the plethora of agnostics and atheists, the goal is happiness/prosperity by means such as The State, whether actively or passively accepted [7].

This assumption of self - of the separation of living beings, and such a causal process - is inherent in most if not all hitherto spiritual Ways which posit and require a praxis, and in the modern abstraction of The State, and also forms the basis of the ethics deriving from such Ways as well as the ethics of that modern abstraction. That is, either (1) The State defines what is moral, by means such as enforceable laws, or (2) such spiritual Ways posit what is moral based on their particular given goal and their given causal process and praxis of achieving that goal.

Why is this assumption of self an error? Because of empathy, which uncovers the nature of Being and beings that has hitherto been obscured by such spiritual Ways and by abstractions such as The State. For empathy - the innate (if still little used and underdeveloped) human faculty of συμπάθεια [συν-πάθος] - reveals the separation of living beings for the assumption, the limitation, it is.

For empathy reveals the a-causal nature (the numinous nature) of living beings - and the nexions that they are to Being, thus establishing a human ethics independent of the hitherto assumed cause-and-effect of separate human beings striving for some assumed goal by means of some given causal process.

Empathy thus establishes a new (or possibly a re-expressed older) understanding of our human nature - both existing and potential - and a new (or possibly a re-expressed older) knowing of how we might avoid ὕβρις and thus the suffering that ὕβρις brings. This understanding and knowing is of the numinous manifest in the indivisibility of living beings: of how the joy, the pain, the sorrow, the suffering, the very life, of what has hitherto been causally perceived as the-separate-others is in essence our joy, pain, sorrow, suffering, and life. For this, this natural balance, this ἁρμονίη, is what empathy, in the living moment, reveals - or rather what empathy by its very nature naturally and wordlessly and effortlessly moves us toward: what empathy brings-into-being.

Hence the empathic human being avoids Al-Munkar (and thus avoids causing suffering), and inclines toward Al-Maruf, just by being human - by using the faculty of empathy in the same way the faculties of sight, smell, taste, touch are used. That is, naturally as wordless perceptions of what-is, and not of what is assumed or believed. There is thus no naming and no ideation necessary or involved in this use of empathy; only a living in the transient moment. For it is not correct to give names to - to denote by names and terms - some-things, some existents; since such naming, such denoting, implies the causality of separation between subject and object, and it is this causality that empathy transcends.

There are therefore no given or assumed causal means - no techniques, methods, or teachings, no praxis, no texts, no faith in some-thing or some-one - as there is no goal, assumed and/or to be striven for. There is only empathy, and its development and use: only the empathy of the living changeful transient moment, and us-as-Being (The Numen, the acausal Unity, The Cosmos) presenced, temporarily, as one living nexion (one being) on one planet orbiting one star in one Galaxy.

How then to develope, to cultivate, empathy? By letting-go of all abstractions (all -isms and all -ologies). By ceasing to denote living beings by causal terms but instead perceiving them wordlessly in the moment of our perception. By ceasing to prejudge other human beings, either by some outer perceived form/appearance or by some assumption or assumptions manufactured or made by others - and instead relating to them as hitherto newly-known beings in the natural immediacy of the moment of our meeting with them. By placing ourselves in The Cosmic Perspective - that is, by an acceptance of ourselves as but one fragile fallible microcosmic nexion only temporarily presenced on one planet orbiting one star in one Galaxy in a Cosmos of billions of Galaxies. This is the essence of wu-wei - a knowing, a feeling, of Being; a knowing, a feeling, of The Numen, the acausal Unity, the Cosmos itself; and a knowing, a feeling, once described in that ancient wisdom termed Tao, and yet which even then, as now, could not and cannot be described by or contained within that one, or any, particular term.

[4] The modern notion of an impersonal abstract 'justice' - said to be obtainable by the making and enforcement of laws - has replaced the older, wiser, personal notion of the natural balance which was manifest in Δίκα and in the Ἐρινύες.

[4] For example, sixty million people in the Second World War, sixteen million in the First World War, and over twenty million in the Soviet Union mostly as a result of Stalin. Estimates of the number of people killed by the Mongol tyrant Genghis Khan range from a possible fifteen to twenty million, to a speculative eighty million.

[5] For an overview of the modern State, refer to my essay, included below, Authority and Legitimacy in the Philosophy of The Numinous Way.

[6]

وَلْتَكُن مِّنكُمْ أُمَّةٌ يَدْعُونَ إِلَى الْخَيْرِ وَيَأْمُرُونَ بِالْمَعْرُوفِ وَيَنْهَوْنَ عَنِ الْمُنكَرِ وَأُولَـٰئِكَ هُمُ الْمُفْلِحُونَ

(Quran, 3:104) " Let there rise among you a group Calling others to Al-Maruf [the honourable] and forbidding Al-Munkar [what is dishonourable], for these are the ones who will achieve success [Jannah]." Interpretation of Meaning

[7] Such happiness/prosperity of the majority - together with what is termed their 'security' - may be said to be the stated or the assumed raison d'etre of The State. Given that in modern times most human beings live in areas where States have assumed or obtained 'authority' over them, by whatever means, it might well be argued that The State with its aims and goals (based on some and various -isms and -ologies, including that of δημοκρατία) has, for those uncommitted to spiritual Ways, become an idealized weltanschauung supplanting more spiritual Ways, and a weltanschauung when not actively affirmed is at least passively accepted by a majority of such uncommitted, non-religious, ones - and even by many religious ones in agreement with that modern abstract division between State and Religion which many supporters and/or theorists of The State assume exists or believe should exist.

In respect of Δίκα, I write - spell - it thus in this modern way with a capital Δ to intimate a new, a particular and numinous, philosophical principle, and differentiate it from the more general δίκη. As a numinous principle, or axiom, Δίκα thus suggests what lies beyond and what was the genesis of δίκη personified as the goddess, Judgement – the goddess of natural balance, of the ancestral way and ancestral customs.

Thus, Δίκα implies the balance, the reasoned judgement, the thoughtful reasoning – σωφρονεῖν – that πάθει μάθος brings and restores, and which accumulated πάθει μάθος of a particular folk or πόλις forms the basis for their ancestral customs. δίκη is therefore, as the numinous principle Δίκα, what may be said to be a particular and a necessary balance between ἀρετή and ὕβρις – between the ὕβρις that often results when the personal, the natural, quest for ἀρετή becomes unbalanced and excessive.

That is, when ἔρις (discord) is or becomes δίκη – as suggested by Heraclitus in Fragment 80 [2] -

A Brief Numinous View of Religion, Politics, and The State

The Numinous View

The essence of the numinous view - of the ethical way posited by the Philosophy of The Numen - is empathy and thus the acausal (the affective and effecting) connexion we, as individuals, are to all life, sentient and otherwise, with empathy being the foundation of our conscious humanity.

The practical criteria which empathy implies is essentially two-fold: the criteria of the cessation of suffering, and the criteria of the individual, personal, judgement in the immediacy of the moment. For the Philosophy of The Numen, these two criteria manifest the natural character of rational, conscious, empathic, human beings and thus express the nature of our humanity and of human culture, and which nature is manifest in a practical way in compassion and in personal honour.

Hence these two criteria are used, by The Numinous Way - by the Philosophy of The Numen - to judge our actions, our personal behaviour, and also all the abstractions we manufacture or may manufacture and which thus affect us, as individuals. Among such abstractions are The State, organized religions, and those things that have been described by the term politics.

The criteria of suffering directly derives from our natural, if still rather undeveloped and undervalued, sympatheia with other human beings and other life; for the nexion we are makes us feel, and aware of, the suffering we by our actions, our words, can cause to other life, with this feeling, this awareness - the translocation of ourselves into the being of other life - making the suffering of others our suffering. Thus, what contributes to or causes or which does not alleviate the suffering of any living being - sentient or otherwise - is morally wrong, and indefensible; with there being one exception - and one exception only - to this. This singular exception relates to the use of force - including lethal force - in defence of one's self, or others nearby, in a personal situation where one is dishonourably (unfairly) attacked or where those others, nearby, are unfairly attacked, with our empathy - our conscious humanity - revealing to us the knowing and the nature of what is fair, and unfair.

The criteria of the individual, personal, judgement in the immediacy of the moment derives from the nature of empathy itself. For empathy is only and ever direct, personal - only living, being presenced, in the personal moment; in one particular moment of causal Time where one is in close personal contact with another human being or another living being. Empathy cannot, by its very nature, be abstracted out from such a personal interaction in a particular moment. It cannot be objectified, for it is numinous - that is, organic; dependant upon an immediate interaction between two living beings.

Empathy thus has no rules; no dogma; no guidelines; as it cannot be or become the object of any "official" recognition, examination, certificate, or award - or be the subject of any academic study. For such things miss, or try to make abstract, what is always and only numinous and living and directly personal, since empathy - correctly understood - is a human faculty, like our sight and smell.

Empathy, therefore - and the pathei-mathos which derives from it [1] - establishes a new weltanschauung, a new perspective for individuals, and has important implications for the way individuals lead their lives and how they view and judge such human-manufactured things as The State, organized religions, and what has been described by the term politics.

A Numinous View of Politics

For The Numinous Way, politics is irrelevant - because (1) empathy does away with all artificial, human-manufactured, divisions and categories based upon a causal separation of beings, and (2) empathy itself, and the judgement arising from it, can only and ever be personal, direct, and in the immediacy of the living moment, and thus cannot be collective, or be organized in any supra-personal manner, with some other person or persons, or some group or organization (or whatever) making judgements on our behalf.

Politics, of whatever kind or orientation, is a process -

which involves pursuing some abstract goal, objective or aim (designated as political and/or as social)

which requires some or many individuals to deny their own empathy and judgement and instead rely on the judgement of others (some leader, organizer, or representative, elected or unelected)

which entails some or many individuals individuals in exercising or exerting some kind of authority or control over other individuals.

The goals, objectives and aims of politics are, by their very nature, based on human-manufactured divisions and categories deriving from a causal separation of beings: that is, which involve denoting individuals on the basis of some principle of inclusion/exclusion, and which principle of inclusion/exclusion (of separation of human beings) is immoral because un-numinous.

This principle is un-numinous because at best it obscures the acausal connexions between human beings which empathy reveals, while, at worst, it severs that connexion and replaces living empathy with lifeless causal abstractions. [2]

Since the numinous view is, as mentioned above, that empathy is the basis, the measure of, the criteria for, our conscious humanity, so it is by means of empathy, in the immediacy of the personal moment, that we manifest our true human nature and our conscious, our sentient, humanity: that wisdom, that understanding, which pathei-mathos has revealed to us over millennia, and which wisdom, which understanding, we manifest when we use our conscious will, our faculty of reason, to act in a compassionate and honourable way.

Our true human nature, our sentient humanity, is not therefore manifest - and cannot ever be manifest - in any causal abstraction deemed political, such as the causal abstraction that has been termed "human (or unalienable) rights", which it has been said can be contained in some creed, pronouncement, declaration, charter, or laws. Instead, our humanity is manifest in our individual, our living, personal and direct interactions with other human beings and with other life - in our awareness of ourselves as one affective and effecting nexion to the living being or beings we so interact with.

Thus, to be human is to be empathic, in the immediacy of the living moment, and to act upon the knowing that empathy reveals to us and which is manifest in a practical way by means of compassion and personal honour. There is therefore no need for "political action", no need for emotive speeches, rallies, or political manifestos, or even for any political organizations or movements for "social change". All that is needed is the cultivation, and the practical application of, empathy, by individuals.

In effect, therefore, empathy renders politics, and all political asbrations, obsolete, and in place of the old, un-numinous, way of politics there is the numinous way of individuals developing and using their individual, unique, faculty of empathy, and thus using and relying on their own natural judgement and reason.

A Numinous View of The State

The State has been defined as:

" The concept of both (1) organizing and controlling – over a particular and large geographical area – land (and resources); and (2) organizing and controlling individuals over that same geographical particular and large geographical area by means of the use of physical force or the threat of force; by means of the central administration and centralization of resources (especially fiscal and military); and by the mandatory taxation of personal income." [3]

The State, by its very nature, is predicated upon the immoral (the un-numinous) principle of inclusion/exclusion of human beings. That is, it occupies, or claims to occupy, a certain designated territory (most often with defined borders), and which territory it seeks to control by the use of force or which territory it has come to control by the use of force, and which force almost without exception involves or has involved the suffering and the killing of human beings.

The State by its supra-personal nature usurps both empathy and our personal judgement, and thus is inherently immoral, unethical, and contra to our humanity.

For instance, and in respect of judgement, The State appropriates to itself - to its Institutions and its savants, its officials - the right to judge, to punish, and to inflict suffering on other human beings, as it also demands, on pain of the use of force, loyalty and obedience from its citizens, for its citizens are expected to obey the laws The State makes.

In brief, The State demands that individuals relinquish their own judgement and instead rely upon the judgement of others - that of some leader or dictator, or that of some representative, elected by vote or otherwise chosen; and which leader or dictator or representatives are said to embody or represent "the will of the people" or some such abstract nonsense.

In addition, The State is almost the complete antithesis of empathy - for its very raison d'etre is supra-personal organization, the control, of individuals, and a centralized planning imposed upon people.

In addition, The State - and the nation, preceding it [4], and the Tyrannos preceding the nation - has and have been responsible for appalling human suffering and deaths, from the horrors of the French revolution, to the brutality of the Russian revolution, to the nationalist First and Second World Wars, to the ideologically-driven Vietnam war and the recent invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan.


        Empathy, however, nullifies all causal abstractions, and in place of abstract supra-personal goals, manufactured or imposed by others, there is only the awareness of the personal moment, a personal dwelling in a particular locality, and the personal exercise of compassion and honour.

In effect, therefore, empathy renders The State (and by extension, the nation) obsolete, and in place of the old, un-numinous, way of The State there is the numinous way of individuals developing and using their individual, unique, faculty of empathy, and thus choosing for themselves - based on a direct and personal knowing of people - how to interact with, and rely on, other human beings in a social manner.

Possibly one of the best ways for individuals to so numinously interact is by means of extended families co-operating in their own local areas - that is, by clans and tribes, and which clans and tribes are defined by a numinous dwelling in a particular locality, by living ties of kinship, and by a personal loyalty deriving from a personal judgement and a direct personal knowing of the individual so given such loyalty. For it is through such a local dwelling, such ties, and such a personal loyalty that we can best express - and have best expressed - our human nature.

A Numinous View of Religion

Just like The State, an organized religion by its very nature is predicated upon the un-numinous principle of inclusion/exclusion of human beings, with an individual human being relying on this organized religion for guidance (moral and otherwise); with the individual expected to conform in certain matters of personal behaviour, and belief; and with the individual expected to perform certain duties and obligations, often of a public or social nature.

In essence, an organized religion provides an individual with certain answers to questions about life - a means whereby individuals can view, and come to relate to, Reality; to understand themselves, and their relation to other human beings. It is estimated that almost three-quarters of all human beings rely on conventional organized religions (such as Christianity, Islam, Buddhism, and Hinduism) to provide some answers to fundamental questions about life and/or to provide them with some guidance on how to behave and interact with other human beings.

Organized religion is quite distinct from a particular localized and numinous Way of Life by virtue of such a Way of Life being based on a quite local distinction between what is regarded as sacred (the numinous) and the profane, with such a distinction involving Nature; that is, a certain area or areas of land where, or near to where, the folk upholding such a Way dwell or have dwelt for generations. That is, such a numinous Way of Life involves an individual and communal understanding - sometimes intuitive or empathic, and sometimes by means of myths, legends, and local ceremonies - of their connexion to Nature (manifest in the area or area of their dwelling), their connexion to other human beings, and often thence to the Cosmos beyond, with this understanding involving an awareness of the necessity for balance, for maintaining the natural harmony of Life. Often this awareness of balance becomes expressed in a reverence for ancestors who are considered to connect the individual, the family, the local community, to Nature (or to have become embodied in or become a part of Nature). To upset this natural balance is regarded as unwise, and the bringer of misfortune - either personal, or for one's descendants. For there exists a natural feeling of continuity with - a connexion to - one's descendants, with one's ancestors, one's dwelling in a certain locality, and with the perceived cycles of natural phenomenon, such as weather, and with personal and communal good fortune and misfortune.

In contrast, an organized religion abstracts meaning and understanding into precepts and dogma, independent of a localized dwelling and a direct feeling for the numinous, as there is reliance upon and/or a veneration of texts, with the consequent need for such "sacred texts" - or some written words of guidance - to be interpreted.

Thus, instead of a personal engagement with the numinous - instead of the direct, and of necessity local and natural, knowing of our connexion to Nature, to other Life, to the Cosmos that empathy directly reveals - there is or there arises an attempt to explain or define or understand the numinous either by reference to some text (revealed or otherwise), or by means of some causal abstraction: that is, as being the effect of some posited and general cause. This attempt to so explain or define or understand the numinous either actually obscures the numinous, or abstracts it out of individual awareness, substituting instead precepts, dogma, and ritual - and thus obscures, or severs or comes to sever, the living connexion that the individual is to all other Life: to the acausal. In place of the numinosity of the personal acausal moment - the understanding of a personal and of an ancestral pathei-mathos founded in a local dwelling - there arises a lifeless cause-and-effect.

Hence, an organized religion such as Christianity posits God as the ultimate cause, with it being said that this cause led to the incarnation (the revelation) of Jesus to effect our salvation - that is, which enables we human beings to achieve the goal which is Heaven. To achieve this effect - of our salvation - we need only to follow or do what has been laid down or prescribed for us, by others: some guidelines contained in scripture; some prayers said or some ritual religiously undertaken; and so on. All this is entirely un-numinous because independent of both the pathei-mathos and the dwelling, ancestral or otherwise, of the believer. That is, the connexion to and the knowing of the numinous is or is required to be or is expected to be other than ours; other than deriving from our empathy, our personal experience, our intuitive knowledge derived from longevity of our local dwelling. Instead, the personal experience, the pathei-mathos, of the believer has to or should be related to the tradition or some tradition within or of such a conventional religion, so that, for instance, personal pathei-mathos has to be comparative, compared to similar experiences of past believers and accepted or rejected based on such a comparison.

        Empathy, however, nullifies this lifeless cause-and-effect and such an un-numinous impersonal required comparison. For empathy by its acausal immediacy of nature reveals the numinous to us directly. There is no need for some posited cause-and-effect, or some posited causes-and-effects - for there is only our personal awareness of ourselves as an acausal connexion to other Life: to the locality of our human, terrestrial, dwelling; to other human beings known and interacted with in the immediacy of the personal moment; to our own pathei-mathos, and to the pathei-mathos of our ancestors, our folk.

What thus becomes numinously revealed by such connexions is the simple need for a personal balance, for the compassion and the personal honour which manifest such a balance and which are always, by their very numinous nature, direct, personal, and of the immediacy of the interacting moment.

In effect, therefore, empathy renders organized religion obsolete, and in place of the old, un-numinous, way of such religions there is the numinous, empathic, way of individuals and the learning deriving from pathei-mathos: our own, and that of others.

Conclusion

Politics, The State, and religion have contrived, by their causal nature, their breeding of abstractions, to distance us from the immediacy of the numinous moment - from that intuitive and empathic knowledge derived from longevity of our local dwelling and from our own pathei-mathos, our own learning deriving from the personal experience of suffering and from sympatheia. Sympatheia makes us aware - makes us feel, know - the suffering of others, so that there is an acausal connexion between the pathei-mathos of our ancestors, manifest in a particular human culture, in human culture in general and our own pathei-mathos, so that such cultures can learn us, as our own pathei-mathos can.

Having this knowledge of culture, accumulated over millennia, having the gifts of such culture, and having the faculty of empathy which we can and should develope, we simply no longer need politics, The State, and religion.

The primal mistake of the past has been to seek to strive after illusive abstractions rather than to seek to change ourselves in the necessary numinous way, with such a striving after such abstractions being the primary cause of the suffering we human beings have inflicted upon others, upon ourselves, and upon the other life with which we share this planet.

To be human - to manifest the reasoned humanity that our pathei-mathos and the pathei-mathos of human cultures have revealed to us - is, quite simply, to be empathic in the immediacy of the living moment, so all that is needed is the cultivation, and the practical application of, empathy, by ourselves, as individuals. This is wu-wei: a living numinously, and a living which, over a certain duration of causal Time, will aid the cessation of suffering and bring-into-being new, more human, ways of living. To attempt to speed this process up - to abstract it - would only cause more suffering and undermine and then remove us from our numinous, human, essence. For the numinous future we so desire only and ever begins with and within ourselves.

David Myatt
February 2011 CE

Footnotes

[1] Pathei-mathos (πάθει μάθος) means a learning from adversity. That is, the personal learning and understanding that arises from direct, often harsh, personal experience - and which may also be numinously understood (felt), and thus appreciated, by some numinous work of Art or and importantly through some intuitive understanding of - a sympatheia with - the pathos-mathos of another human being, recorded or transmitted in some form or recounted by some means.

Pathei-mathos thus possesses a numinous authority over and beyond the supposed authority of conventional religions, and all other abstractions, such as politics.

For a brief overview of pathei-mathos, refer to my essay Quid Est Veritas? and my The Classical Foundations of The Numinous Way.

[2] For more in respect of the principle of inclusion/exclusion (a principle also prevalent in conventional philosophy) see, for example, my Notes Concerning Causality, Ethics, and Acausal Knowing, and also Introduction to The Philosophy of The Numen.

[3] The definition is taken from my somewhat polemical article, The Failure and Immoral Nature of The State.

[4] The origin and nature of the modern Nation is outlined in The Failure and Immoral Nature of The State.

The State thus divides people into those so governed and controlled – subjects – and those who govern or who are employed by those who govern to organize and control the subjects, with both subjects and those who govern or who are employed to organize and control the subjects being regarded as citizens of The State. In addition, The State designates and decides what is public and private (for example, in relation to land, or particular places) as it appropriates to itself the authority to control what it has so designated as public.

Given that the modern State controls and assumes authority over a certain geographical area, and given that these geographical areas are described by the term nation, a useful alternative term for The State is the nation-State.

In essence, what I have termed the acausal is not a generalization – a concept – deriving from a collocation of assumed, imagined, or causally observed Phainómenon, but instead that wordless knowing which empathy reveals and which a personal πάθει μάθος often inclines us toward. That is, the acausal is a direct and personal (individual) revealing of beings and Being which does not depend on denoting or naming.

What is so revealed is the acausal nature of some beings, and the connexion which exists between living beings. This particular revealing may be termed acausal-knowing, as distinct from the causal-knowing that results from observing Phainómenon.

Hitherto, beings and Being have been approached, understood, by means of our known physical senses – by Phainómenon – and by what has been posited on the basis of Phainómenon, which has often meant the manufacture of categories and abstract forms which beings are assigned to on the basis of some feature that has been outwardly observed or which has been assumed to be possessed by some beings or collocation of beings.

The new revealing of beings and Being means that our faculty of empathy – or more correctly, a developed faculty of human empathy – should be added to the five Aristotelian essentials, and which now six essentials enable us to come to know both the reality external to ourselves and the reality of ourselves, as individuals. That is, it is the combination of causal-knowing and acausal-knowing that can incline us toward a knowing of Reality and thus which manifests thoughtful-reasoning, a reasoned or balanced judgement [ σωφρονεῖν ].

Furthermore, when it is said that it is the acausal (or acausal energy) which animates physical matter, imparting to that matter what we observe as life [1], this animation is not some cause-and-effect (or even some assumed acausal effect) but rather the state of such matter being alive – that is, of there being a living-being (a biological organism) as distinct from a non-living being (ordinary physical matter). Furthermore, Life [ ψυχή ] does not exist as some causal form or abstraction sans beings, but is rather what we perceive as the nature of those beings which are observed to be alive, and which nature (or character) only empathy currently reveals to us.

The nature of living-beings that empathy reveals is of acausal connexions between all living-beings, sentient and otherwise, and this leads us to the understanding that our own self-identity, our separateness and independence and even our assumed uniqueness in causal Time and causal Space, are causal presumptions. That is, a product of Phainómenon, of only causal-knowing. Since such causal-knowing is incomplete, lacking as it does acausal-knowing, it is thus not a sound basis to use in the matter of making ethical judgements.

Acausal-knowing leads us to some postulations regarding the acausal. One of these is that the acausal differs from the causal by reason of being a continuum of acausal Space and acausal Time, in contrast to the causal geometrical Space and linear causal Time of the causal continuum of Phainómenon. This in turn leads to the postulation of acausal energy, which is assumed to be ‘that-which’ might be a possibly observable attribute of a living-being having the hitherto causally-observed attributes of life. This then leads to the postulation of such acausal energy having certain attributes [2], of some or all of these attributes possibly being observable by the development of observational/experimental techniques perhaps partly based on acausal energy, and of such acausal energy therefore being manifest or capable of being manifest, as energy sans beings, in the causal continuum.

However, while these may seem reasonable assumptions about the nature acausal, about acausal Phainómenon, they are still only assumptions, and thus may not necessarily re-present that nature, accurately or otherwise. Indeed, such postulations concerning the nature of the acausal might merely replicate the error of imposing assumed causal forms upon that-which, being acausal, is formless.

For all that the acausal-knowing which empathy currently reveals to us is: (1) of a personal knowing of other living-beings and of ourselves in the immediacy-of-the-causal moment, and of (2) how the acausal itself is not some ‘essence’ behind or beyond the causal and beyond causal forms, since such an ‘essence’ is but itself a postulated ideation.

Or, expressed somewhat differently, our acausal-knowing is simply a revealing of the matrix of nexions which are living-beings, and thus of -

[1] Currently, we observe or assume life by the following seven attributes: a living organism respires; it moves; it grows or changes; it excretes waste; it is sensitive to, or aware of, its environment; it can reproduce itself, and it can nourish itself.

[2] Some of the attributes of acausal energy, expressed in terms of acausal mass (analogous to causal mass/energy) might be the following: