A wonderfully warm and Sunny day with no clouds to cover the joy-bringing-blue. The Sun was warm even as it ascended while I cycled, on my roadster, rural lanes totally devoid of traffic because of it being Sunday, early. So pleasing, this simple joy of an English morning in latish Summer when I – tired from long hours of work yesterday – leant against a fence to just-be in each slowly passing moment. Such peace, as if the meaning of life was at last not only known but felt, lived, as no human-made noise intrudes and one feels the strength, the giving, of the Sun; feels the growing that is in fields, trees, bush, hedge.
So much, so much so simply known and felt as warmth and the natural silence bring a sleepy calm and there is the brief sleep of lying in warming grass before one awakes to feel all living-life thus knowing human-caused suffering for the blight, the stupidity, that it is. To be – to let-be – is again my answer and so I slowly, so-slowly, returned to my dwelling where now, three hours later, I sit on the grass in the garden knowing-feeling my weakness of months, years, decades past.
So I am haunted, here and again, where – again – the Swallows gather as they gather at this time of year: chirping, chattering, to each other and preparing in a few weeks time, perhaps a month, to leave until the next Spring turns toward another Summer. Thus do they now skim the fields, catching, eating, their food as the cycle of natural life upwardly repeats and a cooling breeze dims a little of the humid heat here in a greening part of England spoilt only by the noise, the machinations, of Homo Hubris.
And yet I am no exception, having trodden many stages to perform so many rôles to so be a cause of suffering: learning, forgetting, learning, but addicted often despite intention to interfering, to blindly going where I had been so many times before. Such stupidity – such sanctimonious arrogant assumptions – negating again and again and again empathy, compassion, love. Too many words, then, even now: far too many too many times as the deluding self lived, arose, died, arose again, to mislead, each numinous allegory only one Sign of how to remember that which our selfish delusion bade us forget.
Thus am I left in Sun to shed such tears as might break me with no knowing of if – when – I will be stupid, arrogant, again. But now – now there returns the peace of silence and sitting in the warming Sun of a late but so English Summer.
DW Myatt
(One Day One Third of August)
( Taken from Selected Letters, Part One )
This is the life of silence
As she lives warm, within -
There where a net of dreams is woven
By a day’s walk, a night’s love,
And those hopes that stretched out as our hands entwining
Seeking some horizon
Beyond
Where the cloudy sky of our dull October day
Became the silky sandful warmful Summer smoothness of beach
Beside a sea azure, Sunful, clear – and warming.
These are the moments of her silence
As she lies warm within such arms as hold her
And the blood of sleep, slowing, keeps her still
Because the nighful sky of night is still
With stars
And the breath to keep her living
Is a gentle tide to ebb to rise to flow
Upon our shore of sharing.
There is sand still – a little – between her toes
Unwashed by such haste as brought us
Back, back to one bed shared
Because we could not would not wait
To be together to seep again
Here where, door locked, the world divides
To be only that which we feel dream see, and flow
Here where daylight seeped sepia-softly
To become our starlit night bright
With stars.
Now, now surely I have dreams memories ecstasy enough
To keep the inner smile
As time, my time, seeps to break me
As those three score years and ten seek to break
Each Earth-dwelling being of Life.
So, three decades older, I touch and touch with gentle touch
The warm soft tautful flesh that keeps her youth
The way our warmth melds us
As the scent of night, sea and sex
Melds together to be a perfume for her Sun
To warm me here
Where I am nothing more than moments.
For these are such moments of a loveful silence
Seeping
That I could die here peaceful in her sleepful scented arms
DW Myatt
The clouded sky of most of the daylight hours has given way at last to breaks of blue, and – another day’s work over – I sit by the window that overlooks the hills beyond where trees begin that turning of colour which so marks the downward part of an English Autumn – and my very being is moved as there plays within this room Bach’s so numinous Aria Ich habe genug.
Thus does beauty live, again, and somewhere, here: as if I reaching out can almost touch its very being as one might reach to touch one’s nearby gentle loving lover. But: there is instead only that ache, that sighing, that knowing of a loneliness, clinging – kept small, undepressing, by only memories of so many times, pastly shared, which in their dwelling bring some solace, as out beyond such a presencing of beauty here we still in our, in this, moment feel so many people of this world subsumed in folly, lostness: hubris hiding compassion, a personal love hiding somewhere between dishonour and desire.
Yet, and yet – we have to hope; to cling to such a wistful dream of ours as the early mist of yesterday’s sun-full morning clung to the meadow fields of the Farm as I alone walked among the trees, by hedges, while the light of Dawn broke to reveal a clear sky which sucked away that mist from dewy ground, mist-fully rising only feet, only a few feet, above where the tops of the still growing grass, now only sparsely flowered, gave way to the still cold air seeping up toward the horizon of my dreaming brightening so slowly warming sky.
Thus are there tears as one man’s so small being seeks a Cosmos where belief knows, learns, cares and yet still so honourably desires. But this is not, yet, that death where one might so easily so peacefully pass to that which awaits, beyond – for there seems, feels, so much more living still to do; so many more spaces of causal Time to so drearily fill with ordinary life until we again can be taken away by such sublime perfection of another numinous moment such as this…
DW Myatt
Here am I listening to JS Bach’s Erbarme Dich and weeping, weeping, weeping: such tears of sadness as if all the pain, all the suffering of the past five thousand years has come to be within me, this selfish man who caused so much suffering, who once – long ago it seems – thought he knew and understood and who thus sent forth so many words.
So many words… Now there is only the pain of knowing; only the anguish of failure; only one allegory among so many to bring that feeling, that knowing, which is far beyond any words I know.
So much failure so many times, by me, by others. Why cannot we learn? Why have we not learnt? Why has not the simple love of one such simple numinous allegory come to stay with us, day after day, decade upon decade, century after century? Why did not the simple love of my own personal leaning born from the tragedy of one beautiful woman’s death stay with me through those so recent weeks of ignorance when I turned back toward a vainful striving?
Why have we always, it seems, regressed toward the mistakes of our past? The mistakes of suffering born from striving for – from adherence to – some abstraction which leeches away that personal love, that compassion, that empathy that is the very essence of our human being?
So and yet again I am humbled by my own knowledge of myself; by that love which has lived within so many others century century and which so briefly lived within me until I became distracted again by the passion of following some stupid inhuman abstraction.
Failure upon failure; death following death; suffering upon suffering. Why have we not learnt? Why have I not learnt? Or am I by my life – by the mistakes of my life, by my own stupidity, time upon time – just one more example among so many examples these past five thousand years?
So much promise – oh how so much promise! – that lives within us, that has lived within some of us but which so many, it seems, take or leech away through their own selfish passion or through their striving for some lifeless un-numinous abstraction, just as it lived within her, him, taken from them as it was taken from them by things not even now fully understood but only felt as when I as in the moment just now past bent down, weeping, weeping, weeping such tears of sadness as if all the anguish of the centuries was seeping out from the depths below.
So, the music ends, and I am once again one man veering toward old age, looking out toward the autumnal hill where the clouds of Dusk have come to cover the setting Sun as begins again one more dark night for this forgetful fool.
David Myatt
2454052.187
Erbarme dich, mein Gott,
um meiner Zähren willen!
Schaue hier, Herz und Auge
weint vor dir bitterlich.
Erbarme dich, mein Gott.
Bin ich gleich von dir gewichen,
stell’ ich mich doch wieder ein;
hat uns doch dein Sohn verglichen
durch sein’ Angst und Todespein.
Ich verleugne nicht die Schuld;
aber deine Gnad’ und Huld
ist viel größer als die Sünde,
die ich stets in mir befinde.
http://www.numinousway.info/pathei-mathos/so_many_tears.html
Over the past decade there has been, for me, a complete change of perspective, for I have gone from upholding and violently propagating the racialism of National-Socialism – and encouraging the overthrow of the existing status quo through revolutionary insurrection – to the acceptance of empathy and compassion, and to that gentle, quiet, desire to cease to cause suffering, which form the basis for what I have called The Numinous Way, with this Numinous Way being apolitical, undogmatic, and considering both race and “the folk” as unethical abstractions which move us away from empathy and compassion and which thus obscure our true human nature.
Why unethical? Because The Numinous Way uncovers, through empathy, the nexion we, as individuals, are to all life, thus making us aware of how all life – sentient and otherwise – is connected and part of that matrix, that Unity, which is the Cosmos, and it is a knowing and appreciation of this connexion which is lost when we impose abstractions upon life, and especially when we judge other beings by a criteria established by some such abstraction. For this knowing and appreciation of our connexion to other life is the beginning of compassion, and a presencing – a manifestation – of our humanity, of our knowing of ourselves in relation to other life, and the Cosmos itself; and, thus, a placing of us, as individuals, in an ethical, and a Cosmic, perspective.
This change of my perspective – this personal change in me – arose, or derived, from several things: from involvement with and belief in, during the past decade, a certain Way of Life, considered by many to be a religion; from thinking deeply about certain ethical questions whose genesis was reflecting upon my thirty years of violent political activism; and from a variety of personal events and experiences, two of which events involved the loss of loved ones, and one of which loss involved the suicide of my fiancée.
However, this change was a slow, often difficult, process, and there was to be, during this decade, a stubborn refusal, by me, to follow – except for short periods – where this change led me; a stubborn refusal to-be, except for short periods, the person I was shown to be, should-be, by and through this alchemical process of inner change. Thus was there a stubborn clinging to doing what I conceived to be my honourable duty, and it is only in the last month that I have finally and to my own satisfaction resolved, in an ethical way, the dilemma of such a duty, thus ending my association with a particular Way of Life, which Way many consider a religion.
During this decade of inner reflexion, of great outward change – of lifestyle, occupation, belief, place of dwelling – there was a quite slow rediscovery of the individual I had been before my fanatical pursuit of a political cause became the priority of my life: the person behind the various rôles played or assumed, over more than three decades, for the purpose of attaining particular outer goals deriving from some abstraction, some ideal, or some other impersonal thing. That is, I gradually, over the past decade, ceased believing in a certain principle which I had formerly accepted; which principle I had placed before my own personal feelings; which principle I had used, quite deliberately, to change myself; and which principle I had stubbornly adhered to for almost four decades, believing that it was my honourable duty to do so.
This principle was that in order to attain one’s “ideal world”, certain sacrifices had to be made “for the greater good”. In accord with this principle, I considered I had certain duties, and accordingly sacrificed not only my own, personal, happiness, but also that of others, including that of four women who loved me; and it is perhaps fair to conclude that it was this principle which made me seem to others to be, for three decades, a political fanatic, and – for many years after that – a kind of religious zealot. Indeed, it is probably even fairer to conclude that I was indeed such a fanatic and such a zealot, for, in the pursuit of some abstraction, some ideal, some notion of duty, some dogma, I deliberately controlled my own nature, a nature evident – over the decades – in my poetry; in my wanderings as a vagabond; in my initial enthusiasm as a Christian monk; in the tears cried upon hearing some sublime piece of music; in my love of Nature, and of women. That is, there were always times in my life when I reverted back to being the person I felt, I knew, I was; always times when I stopped, for a few months, or a year or maybe longer, interfering in the world; when I ceased to place a perceived duty before myself, and when I thus interacted with others, with the world, only in a direct, personal, empathic way sans some ideal, some dogma.
Now, I have finally come to understand that this principle of idealism, the guiding principle of most of my adult life, is unethical, and therefore fundamentally wrong and inhuman. That is, it is a manufactured abstraction; a great cause of suffering, and that nothing – no idealism, no cause, no ideal, no dogma, no perceived duty – is worth or justifies the suffering of any living-being, sentient or otherwise. That it is empathy, compassion and a personal love which are human, the essence of our humanity: not some abstract notion of duty; not some idealism. That it is the impersonal interference in the affairs of others – based on some cause, some belief, some dogma, some perceived duty, some ideology, some creed, some ideal, some manufactured abstraction – which causes and greatly contributes to suffering, and which moves us far away from empathy and compassion and thus diverts us from our humanity and from changing ourselves, in a quiet way, into a more evolved, a more empathic and more compassionate, human being.
Thus, in many ways, The Numinous Way – as now developed, and as explicated by me in the past month (See Footnote 1) – represents my true nature: the hard, difficult, re-discovery of what I had controlled, and lost; and, perhaps more importantly, an evolution of that personal nature as a result of my diverse experiences, my learning from my mistakes, and my empathic awareness of the suffering I have caused to others.
Hence, I have been, for many decades, wrong; misguided. Or, rather, I misguided myself, allowing idealism and a perceived duty to triumph over, to veil, my humanity. My good intentions were no excuse, even though, for nearly four decades, I made them an excuse, as idealists always do. For, during all the decades of my various involvements – of my arrogant interference based on some abstraction – I sincerely believed I was doing what was “right”, or “honourable”, and that such suffering as I caused, or aided, or incited, was “necessary” for some ideal to be born in some “future”.
But now my inescapable reality is that of a personal empathy, a personal compassion, a simple, quiet, letting-be; a knowing that such answers as I have, now, are just my answers, and that I have no duty other than to be human, to gently strive to be a better human being through reforming myself by quietly cultivating empathy and compassion. Of course, I do not expect to be understood, and probably will continue to be judged, by others, according to some, or all, of my former beliefs, involvements.
So I rest – tired, awake, exhausted, from days of work,
Worry, Dreams, and Thought
Resting while the hot Sun flows
And the fastly flowing nebulae of clouds, wind-spaked,
Grow tendrils to shape themselves with faces
Here:
One planet gasping as it gasps
Since the slaying by Homo Hubris never ever seems
To stop.Too late the empathy to set us flowing
Back to love?
So much promise for so long undesired
I am left sad, warm, sleepy
While the Summer Sun brings peace enough
To sleep-me
As the circling Buzzard
Cries.
So There Is Warm Sun
David Myatt
2454949.773
Source: http://www.numinousway.info/pathei-mathos/change_perspective.html
Footnote:
1) See my revised essays collected under the title The Numinous Way of Life: Empathy, Compassion and Honour.
One sunny afternoon in March, and I am yet again sitting in a field – this time by a narrow shallow slow moving stream – in this rural England that I love. Yet, even here so sad to say, the rumble of traffic, miles distant, can be heard, as one Homo Hubris after another trundles on in such a trundling life as becomes them.
Here – only the Frog, still, there on the bottom of the stream, unmoving as I for ten minutes. Here – a Skylark, rising, singing. Here – a blue sky as the morning dull cloud broke to leave shuffling Cumulus which brest the distant hill in my South. Here – a hay meadow where life grows as it grows: now with wild Primrose by the hedge and Daises rising, opening, in the grass soon to be home to the so many wild flowers of late English Spring…
Yesterday I remember so well how I came down from a walk in the hills alone having stood to watch the Dawn Hour where beautiful patterns of colour became transformed almost minute by minute: a dark narrow band of altocumulus above the eastern horizon behind which was another higher band of thinner cloud with the yet-to-rise Sun scintillating their colour, edge to edge, from magenta to English Rose-red to crimson to Roman-purple while, around, a banded sky of azure, violet and early-morn-blue changed as it changed, slowly, as if in rhythm with the growing light… So much beauty, to softly, gently bring a crying as one cries silent when so much life, so much belonging, touches to stilly touch that deeper-being, within.
Yes, I remember how, there on that narrow summit bounded by hedge, tree, bush, I had stood, leaning on my stick, as the birds around sang – Blackbird, Robin, Wren, Thrush… There had been an Owl, hooting, as I walked up the narrow wooded path in the almost-dark before Dawn Hour; some rustling in trees nearby as wild Deer, startled by bearded man, moved as they moved, away. I remember how, on my return, I emerged from the narrow path – there an old Roman road – to stand before the modern road which bisects the village, and it was as if I had entered another, strangeling, world, not quite human.
Gone – the slow natural quietness of Nature. Gone – the changing lights and that sense of belonging. Gone – the sacred stillness of so much beauty. Instead – cars, fastly moving in their haste and their noise. Not for their denizens, hunched, the taste of early morning English Spring-March air; not for them the song of birds as the Dawn Chorus, numinous, builds as it builds in March, beyond a now passed bleak-dark Winter. Not for them – the hunched, eyes-fixated – the slow natural walking rhythm of a natural walking life where one can through slowness watch the light growing in that wondrous Dawn Hour on a clear day before the Sun, bringer of Life, breaks forth over the horizon where we dwell, knowing thus our fated fragile smallness.
So, yes, I remember how I felt, yet again, then – feeling I do not belong to the modern world with its noise, denizens, speed and lifeless abstract urban concerns. And yet – and yet, that world is so eagerly, so earnestly, encroaching upon, destroying, my world where I, reclusive, dwell within my silence. So I sigh, to see the green Frog move to rise, slowly, to fill itself once more with air here where one field is one cosmos, observed.
DW Myatt
( Taken from Selected Letters, Part One )
The Meaning of Honour
Honour, according to The Numinous Way, is a specific code of personal behaviour and conduct, and the practical means whereby we can live in an empathic way, consistent with the Cosmic perspective of The Numinous Way. It is thus a means for us to cease to cause, and to alleviate, suffering to the other life which exists in the Cosmos. Honour is how we can change, and control, ourselves in a moral way, and it is the moral basis for giving personal loyalty (or allegiance) and undertaking obligations relating to one’s personal duty, which duty we pledge (or swear) to do on our honour. One of the most obvious outward expressions of living by honour is the possession of personal manners.
As mentioned elsewhere:
“Honour means we respect people – we are well-mannered toward them; we treat them as we ourselves would wish to be treated, and are aware of them, as unique individuals, as fellow human beings, who feel pain, anguish; who love, and who can know joy, sorrow and happiness. That is, we have empathy toward them, and this empathy – this awareness of their humanity – should incline us toward compassion, which is an expression of our very humanity, of our ability to know, to be aware of, the feelings, the suffering, of others. In effect, compassion and empathy provide that supra-personal perspective which makes us truely human and civilized.
Thus, honour, empathy and compassion are all related. Honour means we know, we feel, what true justice is – it is individuals being fair, being reasonable. Honour also means what we strive to do what is right, and are prepared to act, in an honourable way, if we see some injustice, some dishonour, being done.” Compassion, Empathy and Honour: The Ethics of the Numinous Way
Honour, in essence, is a manifestation of the numen of our human life, and when we act or strive to act with honour we are presencing the numen: we being a natural, human, nexion to the numinous itself, and thus re-present the qualities and virtues of what is numinous.
Understood thus, honour is only and ever personal: that is, one can only have honour, and be honourable, toward, living-beings. Thus, for us as social human beings, honour means and implies one has certain duties and obligations toward other human beings, and that we can only give our loyalty to individuals – to a living being – whom we personally know, and not to some abstraction, or to some human manufactured causal form, or to some perceived or assumed ideal. Similarly, we can only have a duty – given by our obligation of loyalty – toward another human being whom we personally know, and not toward some abstraction, or to some human manufactured causal form, or to some perceived or assumed ideal.
Hence, while honour in general beholdens us to act in an ethical, well-mannered, way toward others with whom we come into contact, whether or not we personally know them, loyalty and duty – according to The Numinous Way – are personal, and require a personal knowledge of, a personal contact with, the person or persons to whom one pledges loyalty and to whom one has an honourable duty. This is so because honour depends on empathy – on a personal knowing, on direct personal experience. All abstractions, all categories, all ideals, all human manufactured causal forms and concepts, all separate us from empathy: from that natural perception of – and that feeling for – other living beings. Thus, in a quite important sense, empathy and honour express, and can return us to, our natural human nature, and enable us to know – to be – that natural connexion to the Cosmos which we are and which we have the potential to evolve. Abstractions, ideals, categories, causal forms – all such constructs – conceal, undermine, or destroy, this connexion.
What this means in practical terms, is that honour commands us to act, toward other people, in a polite, fair, well-mannered, unprejudiced way, and that – initially – we give individuals “the benefit of the doubt”. Thus do we strive to view individuals as individuals, and our judgement of them is based upon a direct interaction with them; on a personal knowledge and experience of them. That is, we do not project onto them any abstract category; do not judge them according to some “label” or some concept or some term – whether political, social or religious (or whatever). Instead, our judgement is based upon empathy, upon a direct connexion to another human being, a connexion which – as mentioned above – any and all abstractions, ideals, categories, and causal forms, at best interfere with and at worst disrupt or destroy or are the genesis of, or a manifestation of, prejudice.
The discernment of empathy means that we do not judge an individual by their outward appearance, or by some category which others, or even they themselves, may have appended to their being. Thus, and for example, their known or stated or assumed “political” views and opinions are irrelevant to an empathic knowing and understanding of them, just as their known, stated or assumed “religion”, or their known, stated or assumed ethnicity, culture or social “class, are all irrelevant to an empathic knowing and understanding of them. Similarly, whatever is known, stated or assumed by others to have been done, by them, in the past is also irrelevant, for we judge them – interact with them – as they are now, in the moment of that personal contact, that immediate personal knowing, and not on the basis of rumour, or allegations, or even on deeds done, by them, or alleged to have been done by them, in their past.
The Numinous Way: Way of the Individual Warrior
Honour is the Way of Reason, Culture, and of Warriors, for a code of honour specifies how we can behave in a reasonable, fair, human way, and such a reasonable, fair and human way is the genesis of all human culture, and of all honourable human communities which such culture arises from and depends upon.
In addition – and expressed simply – a warrior is someone who strives to live by a specific Code of Honour; someone who values honour, loyalty and duty, and, most importantly, is prepared to die rather than be dishonoured, or be disloyal, or shirk a duty they have pledged to do. That is, they value honour above their own lives.
What is both interesting and important about the Code of Honour of The Numinous Way is that it expresses the fair, and human, attribute that tolerance, and compassion, have certain ethical limits, and it is these setting of human, and ethical limits, which in one way serves to distinguish and separate The Numinous Way from other ethical philosophies, such as Buddhism, based upon compassion and upon a desire to cease to cause suffering.
Thus, while honour demands that we are fair and tolerant and unprejudiced toward others, it also allows for not only self-defence, but also for the employment, if required, of the use of violent force (including lethal force) to defend one’s self and those to whom the individual has given a personal pledge of loyalty and who thus come under the honourable protection of that individual. Hence, if one is attacked, it is honourable to defend one’s self, and if the circumstances require it, ethical to use such force as is necessary, even if this means that the attackers or attackers are injured or killed.
Some simple examples will serve to illustrate this most honourable of ethical principles and also the attitude, the nature, of the warrior. Consider that an individual is threatened with robbery: if the robber cannot be reasoned with, then the individual has an honourable duty to use whatever force is required to rout, and if necessary, disable, the robber. To accede to the demands of the robber would be a dishonourable act. Consider that a person demands that you do whatever that person says, and is prepared to use, for example, force or some threat to get their own way; then the honourable thing is to refuse such a dishonourable demand and to, whatever the risk, attack or otherwise rout such a dishonourable person. This applies for instance in the case of unarmed individual threatened by someone with, for example, a gun who demands that the unarmed individual do certain things; the honourable individual refuses, and – even if it means their death – tries to attack the armed individual, for to “give in” would be an act of dishonour, and the honourable individual would prefer death to such dishonour. Consider that a person encounters an individual (or several individuals) attacking a lady; the person comes to her defence, and uses whatever force required to rout the attacker (or attackers). Similarly, if a person of honour sees several individuals attack one individual, man or woman, then the honourable thing to do is to aid such an attacked individual.
As should be obvious from the foregoing examples, the individual of honour – the man, of woman, of honour, the individual warrior – would be trained and prepared for such situations, and either carry a weapon to defend themselves (and others, if necessary) and/or know how to disable and rout an armed attacker. In addition, the individual of honour uses their own judgement – and honour itself – to decide how to act and react. That is, they rely on themselves, on their honour, and not upon some external authority or upon some abstract un-living “law” or some abstract un-living concept of “justice”. For true, human, law and justice resides in – and can only ever reside in – honourable individuals, and to extract it out from such individuals (from that-which-lives) into some abstraction is the beginning of, and the practical implementation of, tyranny, however many fine sounding words may be used to justify such an abstraction and to obscure the true nature of honour. For individuals of honour understand – often instinctively – that honour is living while words are not; that honour lives in individuals, while words thrive in and through dishonourable individuals in thrall to either their own emotions and desires or to some abstraction.
Furthermore, the individual warrior of The Numinous Way is quite different from the soldier, for the warrior of The Numinous Way is a new, yet ancient, type of human being whose only loyalty and duty is to individuals known to them personally. That is, such warriors fight only if necessary in defence of their own honour; or in defence of someone attacked in an unfair situation by a dishonourable person or by dishonourable others; or in defence of and as a duty to another individual to whom they have given a personal pledge of loyalty and whom they personally know and respect and regard as honourable. Such a warrior would consider it dishonourable to be part of any modern army or armed force, who and which fight on behalf of some political abstraction (such as a State or a nation) or in perceived loyalty and duty to some “leader” or President (or whatever) whom they have never personally met and whom thus they have never been able to judge for themselves as being worthy of such loyalty.
Thus, The Numinous Way is the Way of the thinking, honourable, individual warrior: of the individual human being who has perceived the abstractions of the past for the unethical hindrances that they are, and considers such abstractions – and all that derive from them – as not only restrictive of that true freedom which is our human nature but also as greatly detrimental to our evolution, as human beings. These abstractions include such things as The State, the nation, “race”, social “status” (or class), all political -isms and theories, all religious dogma and theology, and all social doctrines, theories, isms and categories. It even includes many – if not most – of the philosophical and metaphysical doctrines, theories, isms and categories which have been posited in an attempt to explain and “understand” the world, and ourselves, but which, in truth, have been manufactured and them projected onto – interposed between – ourselves, others and “the world”, thus obscuring the numinous and thus distancing us from our faculty of empathy.
However, the only ethical, honourable way – consistent with The Numinous way – to counter such social, political or religious abstractions, is to live in an honourable manner; to be part of, to strive to create, new communities based only upon the law and ethics of honour. By so living, we are using, and developing, our natural faculty of empathy, and thus living as human beings, and striving, in an honourable, empathic, compassionate way, to develope and further evolve ourselves.
Thus, as stated elsewhere:
“In respect of change, what is required, by the ethics of The Numinous Way, is a self-transformation, an inner change – a living according to the ethics of The Numinous Way. That is, compassion, empathy, honour, reason – the cessation of suffering, and the gradual evolution, development, of the individual…This is a personal change, and a slow, social change. The social change arises, for example, when groups of people who follow such a Way freely decide to live in a certain manner through, for example, being part of, or creating, a small rural community. The social change also arises when others are inspired by the ethical example of others.
All this takes us very far away from political or violent revolution – very far away from politics at all. So no, a violent revolution, the overthrow of some State or some government, is not the answer; instead, inner personal development and ethical social change are answers.” A Numinous Future – Beyond The State and The Nation
Can you explain in more detail the relation between honour and empathy and how this relates to the question of suffering?
Empathy may be said to be the essence of what I have called The Numinous Way – empathy with life, with Nature; with other human beings; with the very Cosmos itself. From empathy arises compassion – the desire to cease to cause suffering, the desire to alleviate suffering – and honour is how we can do this, how we can restrain ourselves and so do the right, the moral, the empathic, thing.
That is, in an important sense, personal honour is a means of living in an empathic way – how we can be compassionate, and empathic, in our lives, in our interactions with other human beings, and indeed with all other life. For the basis of personal honour is the desire to treat other people – other living beings – as we would wish to treated. Having manners, modesty, being polite and gentle, are part of honour, because these things enable us to relate to people in a moral, empathic, way.
What about animals? You have written about respecting all life and not causing suffering to animals – does this mean you accept that animals have rights?
In respects of animals, it is a question of respect and empathy, of knowing and feeling the connexion that we, as individual human beings, are with all manifestations of life, human, animal and otherwise. We should treat animals as we ourselves, as individual beings, would like to be treated. Would we wish to be subject to pain? To suffer? Would we wish to be captured, and held in captivity, and experimented on, and breed for food and for slaughter? No, of course not. In an earlier essay of mine, I gave an analogy concerning a race of aliens – sentient extra-terrestrial life-forms who possess technology far superior to ours – who come to Earth and who treat us as we treat and have treated animals: as property; as some commodity. Such an analogy should place us, and other life in the Cosmos, in context – providing us with the new Cosmic perspective, the new Cosmic ethics, we need, in place of the ego-centric, human-centric, arrogant perspective and ethics of the past.
Thus, we need to feel and know – to accept – how we are but one small manifestation of Life, connected to all life in the Cosmos. What we do, or do not do, has consequences for ourselves and for other Life. To have empathy – to be empathic – is to be an evolved and evolving human being: it is to be and behave as an adult, a rational human being rather than as the children we have been for so many thousands of years with our tantrums, our squabbles, our pride, our need to fulfil our own desires regardless of the suffering we might or do cause to others, to animals, to Life.
As for “rights”, that is an abstract concept, imposed upon Life, and like all concepts, it distorts what-is, and encourages conflict and suffering because it posits some ideal which it is believed can and should be striven for. Correctly understood, it is empathy which is important – not such an abstract concept as “rights”. From empathy there is compassion, and personal honour, for such honour, as I explained earlier, sets the practical limits of our personal behaviour, and thus prevents us from going beyond the boundaries which empathy sets.
In essence, therefore, empathy takes us far beyond the classification of concepts and the sterile, rather uncompassionate debates that revolve around such concepts as “rights”. Thus, there is no need to debate, for example, whether some or all animals are sentient, or whether they are “intelligent” according to some abstract criteria, for such questions are irrelevant, from the perspective of empathy, from the perspective of the matrix of the Cosmos. We have – or can develope – an empathy with life; an appreciation of Life itself; an understanding of the possibilities that life presents.
But we are encumbered by the dead-weight of our own arrogance, our hubris, our belief we are “superior” to some other life on this planet.
You have written recently that you regard The Numinous way as fundamentally a-political, more of a spiritual way of life. Has this fundamental change in your beliefs been the result of your own experience these past six or more years, since surely you previously agitated for political, revolutionary change?
There certainly has been a fundamental change, as a result of my thinking, and my experiences, some of which have been deeply personal, and occasionally tragic. In essence, I have come to feel, know and understand the value and importance of empathy, compassion and human love, and to realize how abstractions – be they political, religious or even social, and be they forms, constructs, ideas or ideals – undermine and are contrary to the empathy, compassion, love and personal honour that are the essence of our humanity. All such abstractions cause suffering. This is the inescapable reality. For adherence to such abstractions, the pursuit of such abstractions, always results in conflict and suffering, and as I have learnt, and remarked in recent essays, good intentions are no excuse, for it the cessation of suffering that is the most important thing, not some abstraction, not some ideal, not some cause, not some vision or dream of the future.
For decades, I myself in my error, in pursuit of some so-called glorious vision or some ideal, pursued such abstractions, and in the process contributed to, and caused, suffering. For year after year I made excuses, controlling my natural empathic nature, my instinct for compassion, by believing that “sacrifices” have to be made – that it was acceptable, in order to have a better future, to use violence, to encourage struggle, and war, and conflict: that if people had to suffer and die to preserve “this”, or create “that”, then it was necessary; harsh, but necessary. That view, however, is morally wrong; reprehensible. We should no longer make excuses for ourselves, for no cause, no abstraction, no ideal, no construct, is worth even one person’s suffering, pain and death. Morally, we are only ever justified in defending ourselves on an individual basis in a personal situation – that is, it is only honourable for us to defend ourselves, and those of our relatives or family, who may be near us, if we or they are attacked. This personal defence can and may involve force sufficient to cause injury to the attacker or attackers, or, as a last resort, it may involve their death if there is no other option available. However, this use of force cannot morally, honourably, be abstracted out from such a personal, direct, situation or confrontation.
For centuries we have mistakenly, arrogantly, pursued such abstractions as “nationalism” and we have gone to war to defend an abstraction called our nation, as we have killed others, and caused suffering. Millions upon millions of people have been killed. Millions upon millions of people have been injured, and millions upon millions have endured hardship and suffering. This is and was morally wrong; it was and is dishonourable.
Previously, we pursued such abstractions as Empire, or we followed some leader or ruler or some King who desired to conquer, or rule, and who in the pursuit of such things again went to war and again indulged in killing and again caused suffering. We have also pursued religious abstractions, and fought, and suffered and died, in the name of such an abstraction, such a faith. Now, the rallying cry is or seems to be for “democracy” and “peace” – and in the pursuit of these abstractions, people regard war, invasion, the occupation of lands, the killing of so-called “enemies”, as acceptable and indeed necessary, as the price which has to be paid. As I said, this is morally wrong; it is reprehensible; it is inhuman.
Not so long ago, some politician said that “if we want peace, it has to be fought for”, by which he meant people had to suffer, be injured and be killed in the striving for this mythical peace, which he incidentally never bothered to define.
Such an attitude, such a belief, is uncivilized: a sign of immaturity; a sign in truth of barbarism, of inhumanity. It is de-humanizing. True peace can only ever be attained by means which do not cause any suffering and by means which do not contribute to any suffering, for true peace is within each and every one of us – it is not some mythical or abstract “thing” which can be attained at some future time through violence, hatred, struggle, suffering, killing or war, just as true peace cannot be attained through some law, or be given by some political party or government or leader or ruler. Neither can it be legislated into existence by some piece of paper (a constitution) or by a particular type of government, such as democracy.
The simple compassionate, empathic, honourable truth is that to attain peace we must change ourselves; we must become empathic, compassionate human beings. We must reform, evolve, ourselves through accepting a Cosmic morality that does not depend on amoral, inhuman, abstractions and which does not claim to have been revealed by some deity. For it is the struggle for abstractions, for abstract ideals – the struggle to implement such things – which is inhuman, which always leads to suffering, however noble and fine such ideals or abstractions might seem, and our foremost, fundamental, principle must be to alleviate suffering, to cease to cause suffering to any human being, or to any living thing.
The politician who made the aforementioned statement has been responsible, as head of the British government, for many tens of thousands of people being killed in various parts of the world; for the suffering of hundreds of thousands of people, for the maiming of tens upon tens of thousands of people, and directly or indirectly, for the torture and humiliation of thousands upon thousands of peoples. Yet such a person – and those who support such a person – finds and find such things acceptable; acceptable, but, they say, regrettable, and they will write and say this because they have placed some abstraction, some ideal, some mythos, before human suffering, and are prepared to inflict suffering in the name of this ideal, this abstraction, this mythos, this belief. This is fundamentally wrong. It is immoral.
For decades I myself made the same mistake, in my pursuit of some political idea, or some religious belief. As I keep writing and saying, we must at last grow-up, and become truely human: that is, empathic, compassionate. We must cease to cause suffering. All we have to do is change ourselves – and let-go of the abstractions we have brutally imposed upon Life, upon human beings.
Are you optimistic about the future?
Vaguely. I used to be very optimistic, but not any more. I hope I am wrong. But it does appear that we human beings are incapable of learning from our errors, from our experience. The names we give to our abstractions change, as do some of the excuses we make for killing and causing suffering, but our basic nature does not seem to change very much. My own life is an illustration of our human stupidity, of our forgetting – for I myself failed to learn, for decades; failed to change myself; continued to make excuses for continuing to cause suffering, and continued to forget the sometimes painful lessons I learned along the way.
We have thousands of years of history to learn from; thousands of years of literature, of Art, of music; thousands of years of personal examples – of people who strove to do what was moral, honourable, who understood the truth regarding the cessation of suffering; who understood the wisdom of compassion. Sometimes, we have honoured such people – more through rhetoric, through platitudes, than following their example. And yet still the suffering goes on – still we follow and strive for and adhere to some abstraction, or we follow our own dishonourable passions.
That is, we have failed to develope the empathy we need, the empathy which we must have if we, and the life on this planet, are to survive, and if we human beings are ever going to evolve, ever going to grow up. It is empathy which is the key, which is required, which is the beginning of our change into genuine, civilized, compassionate, beings, and this requires us to have the perspective of the Cosmos, of all Life: an appreciation and understanding and feeling for how all such life is connected, and how we are but one finite, temporal, nexion, and of how we can, through such empathy, reach out toward a more evolved existence beyond the spatial temporality of this Earth.
As some people have remarked, all this does seem rather like Buddhism. Would you agree?
There are certain similarities, but a great many differences. A difference such as that of personal honour. A difference such as that of empathy – as manifest in the perspective of the Cosmos; in the knowing of The Numen, and the presencing of The Numen through such things as music, Art, literature, and the immediacy-of-the-moment when we feel the beauty, the joy, the potential, of Life within us.
Thus, while there is suffering, there is also – and can be and should be – great joy; great beauty. A knowing of beauty so great that we are momentarily removed from our own often mundane lives and transported to another more numinous realm of existence. Hence there is the prehension of the moment – a living-in such a moment, rather than the somewhat turning-away from the world, from life, that exists in Buddhism when so many moments are used to end the presencing of the moment, through such a technique as meditation.
The Numinous Way is essentially both a new and an old way of living. New, in that we are consciously aware of the need not to cause suffering and so can, because of honour, restrain ourselves and reach out with empathy, love and compassion. Old, because there is or can be wu-wei. New, because there is a going-beyond each and every abstraction to the essence which is of ourselves as one finite, temporal nexion; old, because there is a feeling for the moral allegories, the lessons, of the past. New, because there is a knowing of the possibilities which await if we can but use empathy and honour to change ourselves.
David Myatt
A quite relaxing day, for me: a day of unexpected sunshine and September warmth after so many dull and rainy days, and I spent most the hours of the daylight morning in the fields, or sitting by the large pond listening to the song of the birds, watching the Dragonflies, the Butterflies and the pond life, with the afternoon spent in gentle gardening, and then just sitting in the warming Sun.
There has been thus moments of pleasure, peace and joy, as of those remembered times when one’s distant gentle lover comes, if only briefly, to stay with one, again. Thus was I, thus am I, brought back, or moved forward, to just-be in the flow of Life as Life flows, slowly, when we gently let-go of that perception which is our small and often selfish self: to feel, to be-again, not apart from Nature.
Hence I am again but one life slowly dwelling in some small part of a rural England that I strive to keep within me by the slow movement of only walking, or cycling, along the country lanes, and which never takes me far from the meadow fields or from the hills which rear up, wooded, less than half a mile away.
Thus has there been time for that calm thinking that arises slowly, naturally, as the Cumulus cloud arose this morning, early, to briefly shade the Sun before they, the clouds, changed so slowly to leave me where my horizon of sighted landscape ended, far beyond the farthest trees, hedge, and hill that I could see. And thus was there a slow thinking about, a dwelling upon, your question of balance…..
Do you find you are still unsatisfied as to path? Or did you find/are still finding, a synthesis between the many? It’s the Balance I find that I seek, and hope for.
…..and yet, for myself, I feel it is more a question of change than of balance, as if we, as a species, are poised, caught, between the past of our animal ancestral nature and the future that surely awaits us if we can change, evolve, into a different kind of being, perhaps into an almost new species. Thus do I sense us, now, as in transition and yet mesmerized, held-back, even imprisoned, by the things we in our hubris-like cleverness have constructed: by the words, the terms, the very language, we have manufactured in order to try and understand ourselves, others, and this world.
Thus do we now interpret others, ourselves, the world – Reality – by abstractions which we project: which we have mentally-constructed and to which we assign “names” and terms, thus obscuring, hiding, the very essence itself, and thus mistaking such manufactured things for this essence.
Thus have we and for example manufactured a concept called a “nation” and a “State”, and have theories of how to govern such constructs, and manufactured “laws” to ensure some kind of abstract “order” within such places, as millions have given their “loyalty” to such abstract things and fought and died and caused great suffering in order to “defend” them or bring them into-being. Thus have we given “names” to differences among and within ourselves – based on some outward “sign” such as skin colour or on some inner sign such as a perceived or assumed “religious” or “political” belief – and thus dishonourably, un-empathically, used such “differences” as a criteria of worth and judgement, and in the process often or mostly behaving in a quite inhuman way. For all such abstractions – however named or described – seem to me to obscure The Numinous: obscure the simple reality which is of the connectedness, the acausal unity, of all Life.
I am as guilty as anyone in having done such things, for – for nearly four decades – I believed in or upheld some such abstraction or other, and used such things as not only a measure of the meaning of my own life, but also as a criteria of judgement, just as I often used violence in pursuit of such abstractions. It did not matter that I sincerely believed my inner intentions were noble and “good”; what mattered was that all such abstractions caused suffering for someone, or some many, somewhere. For such suffering was a natural consequence of those abstractions, constructed and manufactured as such things were by us in our vain arrogance.
Of course, many have understood this, or felt this, over the millennia – as some Ways have been developed to try and move us back toward the reality of connectedness. But always – always, it seems to me – over causal time, the simple unaffected pure meaning, the suffering insight, becomes lost in the words and through dogma, especially through dogma, and in particular through our very need, our very desire, to strive to “attain” some-thing, or to follow some-thing, or someone.
Perhaps only in music, Art, literature, poetry, a personal loyal love, and such-like emanations – in those things which wordlessly capture if only for a moment the Numinous itself – there is and has been a reminder of what-is, of what can-be. Of what we have forgotten and what we have glimpsed or have the capacity to glimpse, to feel, to know.
It seems to me, finally, that there are no answers, because no questions exist; we only impose questions upon what-is. For we have this need to make complex what is simple; we have this Promethean irritation within us. Certainly, this inner irritation, this inability to be empathic with Life (except perhaps in moments) brings us or can bring us joy, ecstasy, and can move us toward a different and at times exhilarating existence – as I know from my own not inactive, woman-loving, and sometimes warrior-like, life. But such a living I sense and feel is only a stasis, a repeat of our often barbaric, animal-like, past, and not the change, the evolution, we need and which surely is possible now, from the understanding the past five thousand years or so has given us.
Thus, my Path now is my Path – which in my temerity I have called The Numinous Way, and which, as it exists now due to the metamorphosis of recent years, represents the results of my ponderings, my thinking, my feelings, and what little knowledge I have acquired from pathei mathos.
Have you found that the seekers path has brought you as much joy as sorrow?
“Always a dream or a memory
Lead us on
And we wait like children
Trusting in the spirits of the Earth.
We love unsuspecting
While they our lovers scheme,
Succour themselves on our blood
And bleed us dry…”
In truth I have found, over four decades of seeking, more sorrow than joy – and yet the sorrow now seems to have merged with the joy to become some-thing which is of both yet beyond both. A new way of feeling, perhaps; or a new way of being, far beyond any words I know, and certainly beyond any and all the various and many Ways and Paths I have experienced and lived. But, of course, there are times – many times – when the sadness seeps back to bring forth burgeoning tears.
All I have from four decades of strife, seeking, searching, questions – of a learning from my plenitude of mistakes – are some tentative scribblings of my own, manifest in The Numinous way, with its Cosmic Ethics, its emphasis on empathy, compassion and honour, and its understanding of how our manufactured abstractions cause and continue to cause suffering, re-enforce our hubris, obscure our connexion to the Cosmos, and distance us from The Numinous.
DW Myatt
2454723.351
Version 3.09
Q: What is the Numinous Way?
A: The Numinous Way is a Way of Life: one answer to fundamental questions, such as “What is the Meaning of Our Life?” According to The Numinous Way, the meaning of our life is to live, in harmony with Nature and the Cosmos, so that we can evolve ourselves and, after our causal death, transcend to another type of existence, in the acausal. This evolution of ours is also an evolution of Nature and the Cosmos.
Thus, The Numinous Way conceives of an individual as a nexion – as one, causal, connexion between the life that exists in the causal and the life, the beings, the energy, that exist in the acausal.
The Numinous Way has its own ethics, which it calls Cosmic Ethics, and the basis for these ethics are personal honour, empathy and compassion.
Hence The Numinous Way is a practical, and spiritual, way of living, as well as providing answers to fundamental philosophical, and ethical, questions. The Numinous Way is apolitical.
Empathy may be said to be the essence of The Numinous Way – empathy with life, with Nature; with other human beings; with the very Cosmos itself. From empathy arises compassion – the desire to cease to cause suffering, the desire to alleviate suffering – and honour is how we can do this, how we can restrain ourselves and so do the right, the moral, the empathic, thing.
Thus the ethics of The Numinous Way – and in an important sense compassion and honour are developments of our consciousness: an evolution of our perception, of our very being.
Q: What are the causal and the acausal?
A: The Numinous Way conceives as the Cosmos as having two fundamental aspects – or two types of Time and Space. There is causal Time and causal Space, and acausal Time and acausal Space. The ordinary, non-living, matter/energy of the Cosmos exists in causal Space-Time. We also exist in causal Space-Time – but, because we are alive, we also have, within us, a certain type of acausal energy. That is, we are a nexion, a connexion, between causal Space-Time and acausal Space-Time. All life, because it is life, has a certain type of acausal energy – that is, it presences acausal energy, in the causal, in causal Space-Time. Acausal energy cannot be created, or destroyed – it just changes the manner of its presencing, or its “strength”, its amount.
The acausal energy which we possess, as temporal, causal-living beings, as an individual, as a causal nexion, is just one type of acausal energy.
Q: What does the word numinous mean?
A: As used by The Numinous Way, the term numinous means a presencing of acausal energy, in the causal. In a more ordinary sense, what is numinous is what we might regard as “sacred”; as special. It thus contains, or manifests, presences, beauty, harmony. It reminds us that we are but a single nexion, among many. It reminds us of Nature, and the Cosmos, beyond us – it provides us with perspective. It presences the true meaning of life, the true meaning of our causal existence, since it is manifestation to us, for us, of the essence of Life itself, of The Cosmic Being.
Q: What is a nexion?
A: A nexion is a region, in causal Space-Time, where acausal energy exists, or is manifest, of through and by which acausal energy can be manifest, or can be presenced, in the causal. We, as individuals, are individual nexions by virtue of being-alive, just as Nature is another, supra-personal, nexion – a connexion to the life, the acausality, the energy, of the living-Cosmos.
What needs to be understood is that the Cosmos is both causal and acausal. We are mostly aware of only the causal aspect – the material world around us; our planet; the stars; Galaxies, and so on. But the acausal exists within, and beyond, us – and the Cosmos is a Unity, a matrix of connexions, of causal and acausal. Thus, The Numinous Way conceives as all life – everything that lives, that exists, in the Cosmos – as connected, as part of The Unity, of which causal and acausal are a part. Being aware of this Unity, of how we are connected, of ourselves as one nexion, is the beginning of understanding the meaning, the purpose, of our own lives.
Q: What do you mean by the term presencing?
A: Presencing means the flow of acausal energy, or energies, from the acausal to the causal, or a manifestation of such energies, in the causal. Thus, a sublime piece of music may be said to presence the numinous, because it captures, it expresses, it manifests, some-thing beyond us, as individuals – something beautiful, numinous, sublime – and as such it may make us aware of The Unity, of the living-Cosmos, and be or become a nexion itself: a kind of “gateway” through which certain acausal energies may flow, or be presenced, which energies may change our consciousness, our being, our life, in certain ways, thus changing us, often in a positive, life-enhancing, way. That is, such a work of Art can access certain acausal energies.
We, as individual living beings, are one presencing of acausal energy, as is Nature, to which we are connected.
Q: What is this acausal energy?
A: Acausal energy is discussed in the article The Question of Time: Toward the New Acausal Science of Life and in the article Acausal Science: Life and The Nature of the Acausal which is based upon parts of the previous article, and an update of it. These articles also outline, in a tentative manner, the nature of the acausal itself.
Basically, acausal energy is the type of energy (or “matter”) that exists in acausal Space-Time, and some of this type of energy can be manifest, or presenced, in the causal. That is, the type of acausal energy which we know and experience – which gives beings life in the causal – is only one type of acausal energy.
Q: What about the question of suffering?
Empathy makes us aware of the reality of suffering, as it guides us, through compassion and honour, toward an understanding of what is necessary for us to alleviate suffering. The ethics of The Numinous Way guide us toward striving to alleviate suffering: toward refraining from causing suffering to other living-beings. Indeed, the desire not to cause suffering – to be empathic, compassionate and honourable – may be said to be the basis of individual living according to The Numinous Way.
Q: What is Culture?
A: A numinous culture is regarded, by The Numinous Way, as a type of being: some-thing which has Life; a presencing of acausal energy here on this planet surrounding our star, the Sun, which star is one star among millions in one Galaxy among millions upon millions of Galaxies in the Cosmos.
A numinous culture arises over time, usually through a small group of individuals ethically and numinously living in a certain area – a homeland or ancestral territory – through shared experiences, through a common heritage, history and so on. Over time, this specific culture developes a certain character: a certain nature, which in general serves to distinguish it from other cultures. This character may be manifest in the way of life of the people of that culture, their religious outlook, their literature, their natural music (that is, their “folk music”). Thus, a numinous culture is not an abstract, easily defined, static, “thing” but rather is a living, changing, evolving, being – a unique type of life. Such a culture is thus a living symbiotic being – in symbiosis with the being which is (or rather which is presenced in) the land of the individuals who dwell in that certain locality, in symbiosis with that community or that collection of communities. And it is this living which is numinous, which presences the numinous.
One of the distinguishing features of a numinous culture – of a living culture – is its smallness. Another is that those dwelling in its communities still possess a reverent awareness of, an empathy with, life and especially with Nature, and often also with the Cosmos, beyond. That is, there is an awareness of “the sacred”; a desire to not commit hubris, to profane or destroy or undermine what is sacred, what is numinous. A culture ceases to be numinous once it strives for abstractions, and once the ground of its morality moves from the individual, the community, to something dogmatic and idealized.
Q: Is Culture important?
A: The Numinous Way considers each living culture – each creation of Nature, if you will – to be important, and considers that these living beings should be aided, and evolved, but only by ethical means consistent with the ethics of The Numinous Way. That is, through honour, empathy, compassion, reason, and tolerance. Thus, The Numinous Way considers that the diverse cultures – the different unique cultures which have arisen on Earth – are worth caring about; worth nurturing, in an ethical, tolerant way. It does not wish to see this great diversity of culture destroyed by, for example, the levelling of urbanization, or by the materialism of consumer-capitalism, or by some political ideology, or even by some supra-personal, large and abstract State.
Each individual is and should be, according to The Numinous Way, free to choose what to believe, what to uphold, where and how they live – this personal liberty, this respect for personal dignity, is an essential part of The Numinous Way which suggests that some individuals may choose to belong to, to identify with and to aid in an ethical way, their own ancestral culture, as some may choose to live in a small community where their culture is treasured in a rational and honourable manner, just as some might choose to live in another way such that new local cultures are born and nurtured.
Q: What is the nature of these living beings – such as Nature and culture? Are they acausal beings?
A: They are manifestations of acausal energies in the causal, and as such can be said to be a type of acausal being. They are not purely “acausal beings”, though. They presence acausal energy in causal Space-Time. As such, they live – they come-into-being in the causal; they change; they evolve; and their causal existence can end. That is, they, or rather their causal apprehension, their causal mode-of-being, can die – become extinct, in the causal.
Q: What about tolerance and racial prejudice?
A: Tolerance is an essential part of The Numinous Way. Racial prejudice is dishonourable, and therefore against the ethics of The Numinous Way. The Numinous Way regards empathy, compassion and personal honour to be supreme virtues, and these imply that each person must be tolerant and that they only judge people on a direct individual basis.
Q: What are the ethics of the Numinous Way?
A: The ethics of The Numinous Way – often called Cosmic Ethics, or the Cosmic Ethic – are based upon the concepts of personal honour, compassion, and empathy. One aspect of personal honour is having manners: treating people with courtesy and respect. What is good is defined according to honour and compassion – that is, what is good is what is honourable and what does not cause or contribute to the suffering, or which alleviates the suffering, of other living beings. What is wrong, or bad, is what is dishonourable and causes suffering or which contributes to suffering.
“What causes suffering? A lack of compassion; a lack of empathy; a lack of honour, a lack of self-awareness, a lack of self-discipline, a lack of the Cosmic perspective. Where is this lack of such things to be found? In ourselves, in our craving for pleasure and material possessions; in the abstractions and the ideas which we project onto the world; in political ideology; in dogma, be it religious or social or whatever; in prejudice, and in intolerance, towards others…The great change toward the cessation of suffering – toward a better world – begins with [the] reformation of ourselves, this evolution of ourselves, this inner development.” (A Personal Learning)
How can we reform ourselves and so evolve? Through compassion, empathy, gentleness, reason, and honour: through that gentle letting-be which is the real beginning of wisdom. One of the most important principles of The Numinous Way is this personal reformation of ourselves: that to restore goodness, and honour – to presence what is good in the world – we need to change ourselves, through developing empathy and compassion, through letting-be, that is, ceasing to interfere, ceasing to strive to change or get involved with what goes beyond the limits determined by personal honour. Honour is only ever personal – and relates to that which affects us, as individuals, and those near to us, such as our family.
Q: What is The Cosmic Being?
A: The Cosmic Being is regarded as the Cosmos in evolution, with Nature representing one manifestation, one incarnation, of the Cosmic Being on our planet, Earth. In a quite profound way, we are this Being – or rather, we are the incipient consciousness of this Cosmic Being, who, or which, is The Unity, composed of the matrix of causal and acausal connexions – the matrix of nexions – which are the living-beings of the Cosmos, both causal and acausal.
That is, the Cosmic Being is manifest in us, because we are a nexion. Furthermore, we can aid this Being – contribute to its increase in consciousness, its awareness, its evolution – or we can in some ways harm this Being, for this Being is not perfect, or complete, or omnipotent. It is us – all life, everywhere in the Cosmos – existing, changing, being, evolving. We aid this Being when we access acausal energies through such things as honour, compassion, empathy – and especially when we change ourselves, when we become more self-aware, when we develope our understanding, our own consciousness, our reason, and when, at out causal death, we move-on, into the acausal, bringing with us the acausal energies we have “collected” during our causal existence. We harm this Being – and the evolution of the Cosmos, and the aspects of this Being presenced as individuals, as Nature, as other living-beings – when we contribute to suffering, or cause suffering, or do what is unethical and dishonourable, for such things remove acausal energy from us, or distance us from acausal energy.
Thus, there is an interaction here – an on-going creation and evolution, of which we all are a part, although many of us do not see or understand this, such is our lack of empathy with other living-beings, our lack of empathy with Nature, and our lack of empathy with the Cosmos itself. For the Cosmos is alive, just as much as Nature is alive, here on this planet which we call Earth.
Q: What about life after death?
A: The Numinous Way posits that the acausal energy which we, as an individual possess by virtue of being alive, by virtue of us existing, having-being, in the causal, is not destroyed when our physical bodies die. Instead, this acausal energy is returned to acausal Space-Time, since the physical nexion – our physical being, in causal Space-Time – no longer exists.
The Numinous Way understands this physical life of ours as a means – never to arise again – whereby “we” can evolve toward the acausal. We can do this by strengthening the acausal within us while we exist in causal Space-Time. This involves us in cultivating honour, compassion and empathy – in using our will to restrain ourselves, to do what is right, honourable, and compassionate. Why do these things do this? Because they do or can presence acausal energies, and so we can access certain acausal energies through them, and so change ourselves, so “evolve” thus acquiring for ourselves more acausal energy.
At present, we cannot express in words or even concepts the true nature of this next acausal existence, except to posit that it is and will be an evolution of our own self-consciousness: a returning to The Unity where our self expands to include the consciousness of The Unity, to be, in one sense, the consciousness, the awareness, of the Cosmos itself. This is so because of the nature of the causal and the nature of the acausal. The causal – where we exist, as physical beings – is bound by causal Space, and Causal, linear, Time. So there is birth, life, death: a beginning and an end, separated in both time and space; causal change and causal movement. The acausal, however, is not bound by causal Time nor by causal Space: it is, “everywhere at once” and “eternal” (when viewed via causal Time).
What about Prison? Did I not read somewhere that, according to The Numinous Way, prison is barbaric?
The Numinous Way regards Prison as an unethical method of dealing with those who are without honour and empathy, who lack compassion, and those who – perhaps overcome by their desires or by some emotion – do something dishonourable and unethical which affects other people.
As mentioned in the now somewhat dated essay Honour, Justice and Penal Reform until a new type of society, new communities, a new culture, arises, based upon the ethics of empathy, compassion and personal honour – and which thus has Numinous Law as it basis – then it is ethical to work toward penal reform, just as it is ethical to work toward ending the suffering we inflict upon animals by, for example, becoming vegetarians, and ceasing to use animals for so-called scientific experimentation.
Q: Is there any relation between The Numinous Way and other religions, such as Buddhism?
A: Only in so far as both understand the nature of suffering and the causes of suffering. But they are distinct answers to the questions about life, and existence. It could be said that The Numinous Way is somewhat more rational, positing as it does concepts such as causal and acausal, and that The Numinous Way is aware of Nature, and the Cosmos itself, as living beings, whereas Buddhism is not.
In addition, personal honour is central to The Numinous Way, whereas personal honour is not central to, or even important in, Buddhism. Personal honour sets moral guidelines for personal and social interaction with other human beings, and from it a cultural community derives their laws. In essence, honour is the basis for genuine freedom, since freedom, correctly and morally understood, is a respect for the autonomy of the individual.
Q: What about Christianity and Islam?
A: The Numinous Way is quite different from both Islam and Christianity, and indeed incompatible with them. For more details, see the essay The Theology of The Numinous Way.
“The Numinous Way is but one answer to the questions about existence, it does not have some monopoly on truth, nor does it claim any prominence, accepting that all the diverse manifestations of the Numen, all the diverse answers, of the various numinous Ways and religions, have or may have their place, and all perhaps may serve the same ultimate purpose – that of bringing us closer to the ineffable beauty, the ineffable goodness, of life; that of transforming us, reminding us; that of giving us as individuals the chance to be cease to cause suffering, to presence the good, to be part of the Numen itself.” Presencing The Numen in The Moment
