Background
What I term The Numinous Way, as a philosophy and as a way of
life, was not the result of a few or many moments of inspiration
striking close together in causal Time as measured by a
terran-calendar and thus separated from each other by days,
weeks, or even a few years.
Rather, it resulted from some nine years of reflexions,
intuitions, and experiences, beginning in 2002 when - for quite
a few months - I wandered as a vagabond in the hills and fells
of Westmorland and lived in a tent, and during which time I
communicated some of my musings, by means of handwritten
letters, to a lady living in Oxford whom I had first met well
over a decade before.
These musing concerned Nature, our place - as humans - in Nature
and the Cosmos; the purpose, if any, of our lives; whether or
not the five Aristotelian essentials gave a true understanding
of the external world; and whether or not God, or Allah, or some
sort of divinity or divinities, existed, and thus - if they did
not - whence came mystical insight, knowledge, and
understanding, and what value or validity, if any, did such
mystical insight, knowledge, and understanding, possess.
During the previous thirty or more years I had occasional
intuitions concerning, or feelings, regarding, Nature, divinity,
the Cosmos, and 'the numinous'; insights and feelings which led
me to study Taoism, Hellenic culture, Buddhism, the Catholic
mystic tradition, and become a Catholic monk. Later on, such
intuitions concerning the numinous - and travels in the Sahara
Desert - led me to begin a serious study of Islam and were part
of the process that led me to convert to that way of life.
But these intuitions, feelings - and the understanding and
knowledge they engendered - were or always eventually became
secondary to what, since around 1964, I had considered or felt
was the purpose of my own life. This was to aid, to assist, in
some way the exploration and the colonization of Outer Space,
and it was enthusiasm for - the inspiration of - that ideal
which led me to seriously study the science of Physics, and then
to seek to find what type of society might be able to make that
ideal a reality, a seeking initially aided by my study of and
enthusiasm for Hellenic culture, a culture - manifest in Greek
heroes such as Odysseus and in the warrior society home to the
likes of the sons of Atreus - which I came to regard as the
ideal prototype for this new society of new explorers and new
heroes.
After considering, and then rejecting, the communist society of
the Soviet Union [1], an intuition regarding National-Socialist
Germany [2] led me to seriously study that society and
National-Socialism, a study ended when I peremptorily concluded
that I had indeed found the right type of modern society. Thus I
became a National-Socialist, with my aim - the purpose of my
life - being to aid the foundation of a new National-Socialist
State as a prelude to the exploration and the colonization of
Outer Space, and thus the creation of a Galactic Imperium, a new
Galactic, or Cosmic, Reich.
As I wrote in part one of some autobiographical scribblings
issued in 1998 and which were based on some writings of mine
dating back to the 1970's:
"It is the vision of a Galactic Empire which runs
through my political life just as it is the quest to find and
understand our human identity, and my own identity, and our
relation to Nature, which runs through my personal and
spiritual life, giving me the two aims which I consistently
pursued since I was about thirteen years of age, regardless of
where I was, what I was doing and how I was described by
others or even by myself..."
For it was this aim of the exploration and the colonization of
Outer Space, and my rather schoolboyish enthusiasm for it, which
- together with the enjoyment of the struggle - inspired my
fanaticism, my extremism, and which re-inspired me when, as
sometimes occurred during my NS decades, my enthusiasm for
politics, for a political revolution, waned, or when my
intuitions, my feelings, concerning the numinous and my love of
women - the dual inspiration for most of my poetry - became
stronger than my political beliefs and my revolutionary fervour.
The aim, the purpose, this idealization, regarding Outer Space
even partly motivated my study of and thence my conversion to
Islam in 1998. For example, not long before that conversion, in
an essay entitled
Foreseeing The Future, I wrote:
" I firmly believe that Islam has the potential to
create not only a new civilization, governed according to
reason, but also a new Empire which could take on and
overthrow the established world-order dedicated as this
world-order is to usury, decadence and a god-less materialism
[...] I also believe that a new Islamic Empire could create
the Galactic Empire, or at least lay the foundations of it.
Perhaps the first human colonies on another world will have as
their flag the Islamic crescent, a flag inscribed with the
words, in Arabic, In the Name of Allah, The Compassionate, The
Merciful."
Thus, as when a National-Socialist, I dedicated myself to my
'new cause', to an ideal I idealistically carried in the
headpiece of my head: the cause of Jihad, of disrupting existing
societies as a prelude to manufacturing a new one. In this
instance, a resurgent Khilafah.
As with National-Socialism, it was the ideal, the goal, the
struggle, which was paramount, important; and I - like the
extremist I was - hubriatically placed that goal, that ideal,
that struggle for victory, before love, fairness, compassion,
reason, and truth, and thus engendered and incited violence,
hatred, and killing.
In addition, I always felt myself bound by honour to be loyal to
either a cause, an ideology, or to certain individuals and so do
the duty I had sworn by oath to do and be loyal to those I had
sworn to be loyal to. Hence when doubts about my beliefs arose
during my decades as a nazi I always had recourse to honour and
so considered myself - even during my time as a monk - as a
National-Socialist, albeit, when a monk, as a non-active one for
whom there was ultimately no contradiction between the NS ethos
and the ethos of a traditional Catholicism, for there was the
Reichskonkordat and
the agreement Pope Pius XII reached
with Hitler.
During my Muslim years I felt bound by the oath of my Shahadah;
an oath which negated my NS beliefs and led me to reject racism
and nationalism, and embrace the multi-racialism of the Ummah;
and which general oath, together (and importantly) with a
personal oath sworn a few years after my conversion, would
always - until 2009 - bring me back, or eventually cause me to
drift back, to Islam and always remind me of the duty I felt I
was, as a Muslim, honour-bound to do.
2002-2006
This drift back toward Islam is what occurred after my musings
in 2002. I tried to forget them, a task made difficult when
later that year I went to live on a farm and also work on
another nearby farm. For that living and such work brought a
deep personal contentment and further intuitions and feelings,
and a burgeoning understanding, regarding the numinous, and
especially concerning Nature; some of which intuitions and
feelings I again communicated by means of handwritten letters,
mostly to the aforementioned lady.
For a while I saught to find a synthesis, studied Sufism, but
was unable to find any satisfactory answers, and thus began an
interior struggle, a personal struggle I made some mention of in
Myngath. A struggle, a conflict, between my own
intuitions, insights, and burgeoning understanding - regarding
the numinous and human beings - and the way of faith and belief;
between what I felt was a more natural, a more numinous way, and
the necessary belief in Allah, the Quran, the Sunnah that Islam,
that being Muslim, required.
For a while, faith and belief and duty triumphed; then I
wavered, and began to write in more detail about this still as
yet unformed 'numinous way'. Then, yet again honour, duty, and
loyalty triumphed - but only a while - for I chanced to meet and
then fell in love with a most beautiful, non-Muslim, lady. And
it was our relationship - but most of all her tragic death in
May 2006 - that intensified my inner struggle and forced me to
ask and then answer certain fundamental questions regarding my
past and my own nature.
As I wrote at the time:
" Thus do I feel and now know my own stupidity for
my arrogant, vain, belief that I could help, assist, change
what was [...] I know my blame, my shame, my failure, here.
Thus am I fully humbled by my own lack of insight; by my lack
of knowing; by an understanding of my selfishness and my
failure - knowing myself now for the ignorant, arrogant person
I was, and am. How hypocritical to teach, to preach, through
writings, feeling as I do now the suffering of words."
I did not like the answers about myself that this tragedy forced
me to find; indeed, I did not like myself and so, for a while,
clung onto Islam, onto being Muslim; onto the way of faith, of
God, of ignoring my own answers, my own feelings, my own
intuitions. For there was - or so it then seemed - expiation,
redemption, hope, and even some personal comfort, there. But
this return to such surety just felt wrong, deeply wrong.
2006-2009
For there was, as I wrote in
Myngath,
" ...one uncomfortable truth from which even I with
all my sophistry could not contrive to hide from myself, even
though I tried, for a while. The truth that I am indebted.
That I have a debt of personal honour to both Fran and to Sue,
who died - thirteen years apart - leaving me bereft of love,
replete with sorrow, and somewhat perplexed. A debt to all
those other women who, over four decades, I have hurt in a
personal way; a debt to the Cosmos itself for the suffering I
have caused and inflicted through the unethical pursuit of
abstractions.
A debt somehow and in some way - beyond a simple remembrance
of them - to especially make the life and death of Sue and
Fran worthwhile and full of meaning, as if their tragic early
dying meant something to both me, and through my words, my
deeds, to others. A debt of change, of learning - in me, so
that from my pathei-mathos I might be, should be, a better
person; presencing through words, living, thought, and deeds,
that simple purity of life felt, touched, known, in those
stark moments of the immediacy of their loss.
But this honour, I have so painfully discovered, is not the
abstract honour of years, of decades, past that I in my
arrogance and stupid adherence to and love of abstractions so
foolishly believed in and upheld, being thus, becoming thus,
as I was a cause of suffering. No; this instead is the essence
of honour, founded in empathy; in an empathy with and thus a
compassion for all life, sentient and otherwise. This is
instead a being human; being in symbiosis with that-which is
the essence of our humanity and which can, could and should,
gently evolve us - far away from the primitive unempathic,
uncompassionate, beings we have been, and unfortunately often
still are; far away from the primitive unempathic,
uncompassionate, often violent, person I had been."
Thus I was prompted - forced - to continue to develope my
understanding in what began to be and became my own 'numinous
way' and which thus and finally and, in 2009 publicly, took me
away from Islam and my life as a Muslim.
2009-2012
Given that the essence of The Numinous Way is individual
empathy, an individual understanding, the development of an
individual judgement, and the living of an ethical way of life
where there is an appreciation of the numinous, the more I
reflected upon this 'numinous way' between 2011 and Spring 2012,
the more I not only realized my mistakes, but also that it was
necessary to remove, to excise, the detritus that had
accumulated around the basic insights and the personal
pathei-mathos that inspired me to develope that 'numinous way'.
Mistakes and detritus because for some time, during the
development of that 'numinous way', I was still in thrall to
some abstractions, still thinking in terms of categories and
opposites, and still fond of pontificating and generalizing,
especially about The State [3]. I therefore began to re-express,
in a more philosophical manner, the personal, the individual,
the ontological, the ethical and spiritual nature, of The
Numinous Way, and thus emphasized the virtues of humility, love,
and of wu-wei - of balance, of tolerance, of non-interference,
of individual interior (spiritual) reformation, of non-striving,
of admitting one's own uncertitude of understanding and of
knowing.
The year-long [2011-2012] process of refinement, correction, and
reflexion resulted in me re-naming what remained of my 'numinous
way' the 'philosophy of pathei-mathos', and which philosophy I
attempted to outline in the two texts
Recuyle of
the Philosophy of Pathei-Mathos and
Summary of The
Philosophy of Pathei-Mathos, the latter of which was also
published under the title
Conspectus of The Philosophy of
Pathei-Mathos.
As I mentioned in
Society, Politics, Social Reform, and
Pathei-Mathos [Part Four of
Reculye of the Philosophy
of Pathei-Mathos] -
"Given that the concern of the philosophy of
pathei-mathos is the individual and their interior, their
spiritual, life, and given that (due to the nature of empathy
and pathei-mathos) there is respect for individual judgement,
the philosophy of pathei-mathos is apolitical, and thus not
concerned with such matters as the theory and practice of
governance, nor with changing or reforming society by
political means [...]
This means that there is no desire and no need to use any
confrontational means to directly challenge and confront the
authority of existing States since numinous reform and change
is personal, individual, non-political, and not organized
beyond a limited local level of people personally known. That
is, it is of and involves individuals who are personally known
to each other working together based on the understanding that
it is inner, personal, change - in individuals, of their
nature, their character - that is is the ethical, the
numinous, way to solve such personal and social problems as
exist and arise. That such inner change of necessity comes
before any striving for outer change by whatever means,
whether such means be termed or classified as political,
social, economic, religious. That the only effective,
long-lasting, change and reform is understood as the one that
evolves human beings and thus changes what, in them,
predisposes them, or inclines them toward, doing or what urges
them to do, what is dishonourable, undignified, unfair, and
uncompassionate.
In practice, this evolution means, in the individual, the
cultivation and use of the faculty of empathy, and acquiring
the personal virtues of compassion, honour, and love. Which
means the inner reformation of individuals, as individuals.
Hence the basis for numinous social change and reform is
aiding, helping, assisting individuals in a direct and
personal manner, and in practical ways, with such help,
assistance, and aid arising because we personally know or are
personally concerned about or involved with those individuals
or the situations those individuals find themselves in. In
brief, being compassionate, empathic, understanding,
sensitive, kind, and showing by personal example."
The Philosophy of Pathei-Mathos
It is the philosophy of pathei-mathos which represents my
weltanschauung. For I now consider that most of my writings, my
pontifications, concerning 'the numinous way' - written
haphazardly between 2002 and Spring 2012 - are unhelpful; or of
little account; or irrelevant; or hubriatic; or detract from or
obscure the basic simplicity of my weltanschauung, a simplicity
I have endeavoured to express in
Conspectus of The
Philosophy of Pathei-Mathos.
DWM
24th April 2012
(Revised November 2012)
Notes
[1] During this study of communism, in the 1960's, I began to
learn Russian and would regularly listen to communist radio
broadcasts such as those from Rundfunk der DDR, something I
continued to do for a while even after becoming a
National-Socialist. Indeed, on one occasion I wrote a letter to
Radio Berlin which, to my surprise, was read out with my
questions answered and this - occurring as it did during the
Cold War - may well have been when I first came to the attention
of the British security services.
[2] As I have mentioned elsewhere - for example, in
Myngath
- this intuition regarding the Third Reich arose as a result of
me reading an account of the actions of Otto Ernst Remer in July
of 1944. For I admired his honour and his loyalty and his
commitment to the duty he had sworn an oath to do. Here, I felt,
was a modern-day Greek hero.
[3] These un-numinous, errorful, hubriatic,
pontifications about 'the state' included essays such as the
reprehensible January 2011 text The Failure and Immoral
Nature of The State and the February 2011, text A
Brief Numinous View of Religion, Politics, and The State.
Among the abstractions (categories) which needed to be excised
from a supposedly abstraction-less and empathic numinous way
were 'the clan', and 'culture', and the divisive category 'homo
hubris', a divisive category I hubriatically pontificated about
in essays such as the 2009 text Homo Hubris and the
Disruption of the Numinous, based as that text was on an
earlier, 2002, essay.
