Bhagavad-Gita Weds the Great Apocalypse — Victim Drama or Awakening to Agency Opportunity?
The Courage to See Without Self Delusion this Hierosgamos§ Blessed by the I Ching
§Definition: Hierosgamos or Hieros Gamos is loosely translated as sacred wedding, often of spirit with matter, or masculine energy with feminine energy. And it can be more loosely equated with the coming together of ostensibly two irreconcilable opposites that creates the third out of that union that united the two, what can be called the tertium quid.
Yesterday My Friend William Commented
’We are living the Bhagavad-Gita married to the Great Apocalypse’ sounds a bit like too much drama to me. One of my great teachers told me once, a long time ago, ‘reduce the drama.’
What was it that prompted William’s call for drama reduction in the time of convid hysteria, trump derangement syndrome, the arrests of people silently praying or for posting errant tweets? In this instance it was his reaction to having seen for the first time my newly expanded closing sign-off in comments and direct messages. I frequently, not ubiquitously, include ‘We are living the Bhagavad-Gita and the Great Apocalypse at the same time!’ I insert this in front of the older ‘All the best with what is changing. Everything changes! With peace, respect, love and exuberant joy. 🙏❤️🧘♂️🙌☯️🙌🧘♂️❤️🙏’
And I hadn’t thought of it as being dramatic, which does seem a bit blind, now that I see it after William’s justified poke. I did, and do, think that it quite obviously and even somewhat embarrassingly has clunkified an already clunky mouthful. Using it gives me mixed feelings. And yet I continue to insert it. Why? As a kind of assholian passive aggressive erudition of joy? Could be! It could well be that expressing joy is to assault senses and sensibilities numbed by social opprobrium and propriety. Lol! Joy as victimising assault language and presence! Especially in the time of serious deadly serious woke lunacy capped off by the great convid.
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Alive When Expressed Joy is Received as a Passive Aggressive Assault Worse than a Triggered Vegan Woke Warrior!
And this is something that I have actually experienced! Well, to be more accurate, I was recently assaulted for expressing my claim to be experiencing joy. It occurred within a small group forum. My audacious, perhaps even outrageous, claim to be feeling joy in my life had raised the hackles of one of them. He articulated his feeling to be that I was lacking ‘congruence’. He further elaborated that he did not feel any joy from me — and he polled the group who concurred with him that like him they were numb to my claimed joyful state. He extended his elaboration to include the critique that if I was indeed feeling joy — which in his opinion is a facile word that fails to capture the nebulous and overwhelming nature of what joy might really mean — then was I in effect stealing from the group their joy?
I was confronted, full frontal, by people who I see/feel who are sincerely looking to discover something akin to, or approaching what may be, an element of the truth of being in this existence that is here expressing life now. Paraphrased, I was described as a joy-parasite or, perhaps more simply or horribly, as a flagellating masturbatory joy-narcissist rather than a generative human fountain of joy. Wow! And I have not ever, as far as I know, thought of myself as a joy stick with which to beat others into joy! What sparked the confrontation with joy was that I have stated, several times over the months of weekly meetings, that I feel in my body the actuality of that feeling-something that is difficult to verbally pin down — joy is for now, for me, the closest word to describe what I’m feeling.
And as I remember how my having articulated this non-verbal experience into a statement of joy become something attack-worthy, I found the surprise I felt then renewed now! So much so that as I write this my face is lightening up with a smile in my lips and behind my eyes. And I was assaulted with a chuckle of spontaneous laughter from my belly in the face of being accused of being a joy-thief! Isn’t that a book or something? Or was that Amy Tan’s Joy Luck Club? (A search on Goodreads revealed that there are two self help books — one for OCD and one for trauma — and a couple of novels and a fantasy series with or that include in the title ‘the joy thief’.)
I wondered at that and to my surprise I came to the realisation that ‘The joy that can be expressed is not the true joy.’ OMG! Where did that come from?! Well, The Tao Te Ching, of course! And thus I laugh yet again. This time at such an easy ‘trust-fall’ into the lazy abuse of an oft (mis)quoted text by the legend of a long dead non-white man or human composite. (For a nice collection of translations of this non-reasonable and yet mostly rational text see: Lao Tzu's Tao-Teh-Ching: A Parallel Translation Collection Compiled by B. Boisen. It may be amusing to some that this collection of challenges to rigid thinking and authoritarian structures has been assaulted by the feminists, of course, for failing to properly highlight the importance of references to the female and female physiology while rationalising away the cultural mis-appropriation of a white female from the USA daring to undertake the task of appropriately feminising with care, this ancient text! Well, I found that funny! For the curious see: The Divine Feminine Tao Te Ching: A New Translation and Commentary. And the search that found that book revealed that this is not a singularity of important feminist re-visioning of that classic text. There are many others.)
And with that I have found myself re-writing yet another classic. Oh woe is me, the hubris I have expressed! Messing with the sacred books of the dead! (Well, to be honest, ‘Oh joy is me, messing with re-invigorating into the now dead people’s swords of wisdom!’)
as for joy, the joy that is expressed is not the trued lasting joy. as for happiness. the happiness that can be laughed is not the lasting happiness. joy is the beginning of the ten thousand laughters; laughter is the mother of the ten thousand happinesses. therefore, those constantly laughing by this means will perceive joy’s trued subtlety. those constant with happiness, by that means, will see only that joy for which they yearn for and for which they seek. somehow these two together emerge as if one; and even though they have different names they are called the same by the undiscerning moralists. and for that joy which, between the two, is even more profound than the profound laughter, is the vulgar’s gateway humour into, then through, the subtlety of the unknowable joy unknown. — My adaptation of a translation by Chan, Wing-tsit. See Lao Tzu's Tao-Teh-Ching: A Parallel Translation Collection, compiled by B. Boisen, Ch 1.)
Yesterday My Friend William Commented
’We are living the Bhagavad-Gita married to the Great Apocalypse’ sounds a bit like too much drama to me. One of my great teachers told me once, a long time ago, ‘reduce the drama.’
And that response really caught my attention of place in a fascinating way. Why hadn’t I seen this pairing of memes, as if married or even as a hierosgamos, as suggesting social catastrophe as drama?
I responded by voice with what comes close to ‘appropriate spontaneity’ because it gobsmacked William. And his powerful reaction surprised me. I spoke into the dm the following:
… it does sound melodramatic. I hadn’t thought of it in quite that way when I was writing that because it doesn’t seem to me dramatic in the sense of melodrama or an idea that we’re outside of the realm of calmness. Because, of course, the Bhagavad-Gita itself is all about being calm in time of disruption.
And the Great Apocalypse, I am now understanding, is the way by which we can find our calmness.
The essays I’ve recently been doing are, I’ve come to see — I didn’t know this when I was writing them at the time — I’ve come to see that when we have the courage to face things exactly as they are, without any sort of self-deception or illusion, that the light develops out of our events in life by which the path to our success in life is recognised.
That’s a paraphrase out of the I Ching. So the Apocalypse, the great unveiling, is really the opportunity or the action of removing from ourselves our need to delude ourselves into what is not true.
So, the Bhagavad-Gita is about becoming calm in the times of disruption; and the apocalypse is about seeing what is true. So that we do have the ability to take our calmness from the Bhagavad-Gita and allow life to evolve into its state of reduced suffering. ... So yeah, it does sound melodramatic, but it’s not really. It is really the opposite. So thanks for that comment. I hadn’t thought of it quite in that way.
§For full text of the Wilhelm/Baynes translation see Judgment Hexagram #5 Hsu-Waiting (Nourishment).
My full paraphrase, with new edits today, that removes unseen bully language and old text-sex bias from that hexagram is:
When we are faced with an obstacle that is to be overcome, weakness and impatience can do nothing. Strong individuals stand up to this situation with equanimity, for inner security enables the strong to endure to the end. This strength shows itself in uncompromising truthfulness with ourselves. It is only when we have the courage to face things, other people and ourselves, exactly as they and we are without any sort of self deception or illusion, that we recognise that we are the strength that sees the light that develops out of the events of our lives by which the path to success may be recognised.
He Replied Some Time Later, Also As A Voice DM
… Maybe get some writing in. That one … As far as your next essay goes, you’ve written it! You’ve written it man.
It all boils down to, what did you say? ‘When I was writing it, I didn’t see this. Couldn’t see this when I was writing this. [‘This’ refers to the just posted ‘Sam Harris’ essay and the one preceding it that is still being written, ie not yet posted.]
However, I have now seen whatever chunk of the I Ching was. That’s it! That’s all you need to write this week. Funny … Lauder is heading to do performance pieces — she’s a dancer and choreographer. Four performance pieces set to occur during an evening called ‘Nothing’. So… she’s kind of in between doing nothing, precisely nothing, dancing nothing, for the twenty minutes of her slot. Or doing nothing and fucking about with it a bit. ... I always tend towards doing precisely nothing, whenever I’m able to. Anyway, I’m beginning to ramble —
Ah Guy! [Laughter.] That’s your essay! So, just relax.
I called someone up. He said ‘Let’s grab a lunch at least.’ And I said ‘Yeah.’ And then after I put the phone down I went ‘Nah.’ [Laughter.] ‘I don’t want to grab a lunch. I don’t want to grab anything.’
And with that, with what’s just seen, what you’ve just seen through, we’re back with Socrates. Which was somehow the beginnings of our conversation. That book Disobedience and his tale of Socrates and the prison. And the false friendship, the offered escape route that would have been — [I hear him light a cigarette.]
I’m surprised — well I don’t know the Bhagavad-Gita well, if at all, apart from the covers. Various Indian focused friends pushed copies of it into my palms from time-to-time. I’ve never actually read it. My sort of … sense of the Sanskrit mastery thing is four horses. It’s about sort of taming, it’s about how you play the reins of those four horses for pulling a chariot. Maybe that’s another book. Yeah, it’s riding a wave, isn’t it? It flows, like I understand more and more why so many folk take to surfing.
Before I had a chance to respond to this delightful and intriguing response, he followed up with a quick message:
… what I said, your spiel that I said is your next essay. Your paraphrasing of … would you be so kind, possibly, as to transcribe that paraphrasing, and the sentence before that, into readable characters, rather than audible ones. Because I tell you, it was spot on. I’m not surprised, you know. Yeah, it is a significant one. I’m pretty much convinced now it’s the only variety of wakefulness that anyone should ever need, really. Yeah, it’s magic.
And a small synchronicity? In a recent men’s group meeting one of the people there is a surfer. And when I was described as a joy thief the surfer suggested that my experience of life was that of the super surfer in theory only: a home full of top-of-the-line surf boards, all the books and videos without actually having put my foot on a surfboard floating on the ocean. I resolved that before the end of this year I will find my way to the beach that isn’t too far away and stand on one before I die. And now William makes a similar comment independent of my statement of intent.
End of synchronicity.
2025.02.15 Reflection and an Essay Begins
“’We are living the Bhagavad-Gita married to the Great Apocalypse’ sounds a bit like too much drama to me. A great teacher told me once to reduce the drama.”
What an interesting thought. An actual living and lived cultural hierosgamos!
I realised with that observation that actually my phrase ’We are living the Bhagavad-Gita married to the Great Apocalypse’ is a call to become awake, to be calm in the face of drama, the great drama of war. And that perhaps that is only possible when we see the truth of our situation.
Arjuna gets upset when he sees, perhaps for the first time, the reality of war! It is to kill our own family members which, by extension, means the killing of those parts of our selves, the false-beliefs of our selves, that no longer serve us in reducing our suffering. Omg! The reality is that when Arjuna looked out over the battlefield and actually saw the army within which were members of his immediate and extended family, he fell into cultural moral despair and fell to the floor of his chariot crying and too weak to hold up his bow. By metaphor, extension and the principles of dependent co-arising and entanglement, that means us. That means me, whatever part of me that is entangled or trapped by ego centricity, hubris and their narcissistic delusions.
So, does this mean that the wars of the world are in ‘reality’ expressing in their entirety the totality of my inner struggle?
And thus, we come to yoga, not the poser postures yoga, the principles of yoga in action in our day-to-day-lives:
The continuous practice of discrimination is the means of attaining liberation (2.26 of The Yoga Sutras of Patañjali translated by Bon Giovanni).
Or:
The apparent indivisibility of seeing and the seen can be eradicated by cultivating uninterrupted discrimination between awareness and what it regards (2.26 of The Yoga Sutras of Patañjali translation by Chip Hartranft).
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Song of the Essay: Talking Heads — Life During Wartime.
Request for Financial Help
In July of 2024 I had unexpected pacemaker surgery that cleaned out my savings.
I requested donations to help me through the pinch. I had anticipated that my immediate threat of insolvency would be cleared before the end of the year. That did not happen as my residency status is continuing to protract seemingly interminably and I am legally disallowed from working until that is confirmed officially.
If you are in a position to help and would like to, you can check out the details of that in
Once my yoga based trauma recovery centre is given the green light, with confirmation of my residency, I anticipate the need for immediate financial help will disappear. As the situation changes I update my requirements. At this time, I’m have received more than 1/3 of what I anticipated is required. So if you are curious and would like to help me, please consider my request for donations and give an amount that gives you joy. I appreciate and am grateful for your consideration of me in this time of the war of the great convid, the great unveiling, the opportunity we have to face the truth of our time with the calmness inspired by the Bhagavad-Gita.
All the best with what is changing. Everything changes! With peace, respect, love and exuberant joy, in the time of the Bhagavad-Gita married to the Great Apocalypse.
🙏❤️🧘♂️☯️🧘♂️❤️🙏