Post by Deleted on Mar 9, 2012 10:02:46 GMT -6
There is more than one message in the work of Howard Phillips Lovecraft. This sensitive writer gladly and explicitly told us some of them, and intellectuals disserted on the others. Let's list and summarize different features easily found in his works:
- Hidden and terrifying forces everywhere around us. Consciousness of entities witch exceed us by large.
- Veracity of our instincts, dreams and feelings, telling us a truth more reliable than our eyes and intellect.
- We are not the first species on this planet, not the first civilization, and likely we will not be the last. Although the hero(s) of the stories usually succeeds to survive or to defeat the evil, our position remains precarious.
- Illusory nature of the laws of physics themselves. When He appears in his novel, Dread Cthulhu is described as "an eldritch contradiction of all matter, force and cosmic order".
- Madness for the foolhardy who dares to have a look at a higher truth.
Many wrote about these. When they superficially studied they were just comforted on their opinion that when Lovecraft told “The sciences, each straining in its own direction, have hitherto harmed us little; but some day the piecing together of dissociated knowledge will open up such terrifying vistas of reality, and of our frightful position therein, that we shall either go mad from the revelation or flee from the deadly light into the peace and safety of a new dark age. ”, he was literally giving mankind the choice between madness and ignorance.
For sure the very existence of the occult is highly disruptive for the average man, not the least because it reveals the sheer absurdity of his life. Usually the average man reacts by denying and returning to his comfortable ignorance.
But the strong, the elite man has better choices. He can be strong enough to resist to the truth, or he can embrace madness, controlling it to his advantage. Indeed the fantastic work of Lovecraft is an eldritch will to transcend the visible world and the narrow vision of the modern man, incapable to face the cosmos.
Michel Houellebecq wrote “Against the world, against life”, an essay about Lovecraft and his work. The two authors have in common disdain for ordinary life and for the modern world, they express it in literature. He explains how Lovecraft wanted to escape this world, this life, and concludes: “The universe, that he intellectually consider indifferent, becomes aesthetically hostile […] He succeeded to transform his disgust of life in an active hostility. Giving an alternative to life in all its form, establishing a permanent opposition, a permanent recourse to the life is the highest mission of the poet on earth. Howard Phillips Lovecraft fulfilled this mission.”
Giving an alternative to life is also the mission of esotericism and occultism. And more often than not, the teaching of the Masters of traditional knowledge, Gurdjieff included, are parallel to the work of Lovecraft.
They are certainly not describing a compassionate and friendly universe, but rather (as anybody with an ounce of common sense can obviously see by himself) a hard and pitiless one, sometimes frightening. "As above, so below" is one of the pillars of traditional wisdom… There are little reasons to expect comfort for the good and weak men after their death, be it in the form of an almighty god or in another. The Masters are telling us different stories:
- “If we knew [...] the vision of this horror would make us lose our sanity. In fact, many men became mad because they glimpsed this reality without adequate preparation.” (Gurdjieff –In search of the miraculous)
- “... [Human beings] stumble along blindly on the road to nowhere – a paved highway witch they themselves bulldoze and make smooth so that they can get faster to the big empty hole which they'll find at the end, waiting to swallow them up. It's a quick and comfortable superhighway, but I know where it's leads to. I've seen it. I've been there in my vision and it makes me shudder to think about it. ” (The Lakota shaman Lame deer)
Developing the self, creating your soul, becoming a higher being is a fundamentally egoist work. Although it is clearly better to develop a “right” mind and although a team work is highly recommended, it cannot be altruist. There’s nothing but logic here: until you are not awake, you are not able to “do”. How could you choose anything, including being altruist? Awaken first, after what you will decide what to do. Nowhere Gurdjieff is calling his students to be good or altruist; to the one who told he was here to learn to help the others, he made it clear that in order to give you first have to be rich. To be able to help you must first be strong enough. He is calling his students, instead, to grasp all the available knowledge and, if necessary, to steal it (In search of the miraculous).
And eventually one may note that, maybe while searching disciples or publishing their works, the Masters are looking quite indifferent to the fate of ordinary men; they live at a higher level, their time is precious. The average men are mechanical, and you cannot help the machines who are not listening to you, nor be really sorry for their doom. The Work is pure Left Hand Path.
Now we realize how these fundamental points are common between Lovecraft and the 4th way: prominence of the occult in our universe, higher forces at work, pitiless nature of the universe, absurdity of ordinary life and giving it an alternative, need and will to transcend reality, and epic struggle to succeed.
It appears that Lovecraft and the 4th way reinforce each other in the Left Hand Path. Using them together, or the first as an aesthetically pleasant illustration of the other, is making sense in an Awakening process.
Ia Ia Cthulhu fhtagn! Remember yourself!
- Hidden and terrifying forces everywhere around us. Consciousness of entities witch exceed us by large.
- Veracity of our instincts, dreams and feelings, telling us a truth more reliable than our eyes and intellect.
- We are not the first species on this planet, not the first civilization, and likely we will not be the last. Although the hero(s) of the stories usually succeeds to survive or to defeat the evil, our position remains precarious.
- Illusory nature of the laws of physics themselves. When He appears in his novel, Dread Cthulhu is described as "an eldritch contradiction of all matter, force and cosmic order".
- Madness for the foolhardy who dares to have a look at a higher truth.
Many wrote about these. When they superficially studied they were just comforted on their opinion that when Lovecraft told “The sciences, each straining in its own direction, have hitherto harmed us little; but some day the piecing together of dissociated knowledge will open up such terrifying vistas of reality, and of our frightful position therein, that we shall either go mad from the revelation or flee from the deadly light into the peace and safety of a new dark age. ”, he was literally giving mankind the choice between madness and ignorance.
For sure the very existence of the occult is highly disruptive for the average man, not the least because it reveals the sheer absurdity of his life. Usually the average man reacts by denying and returning to his comfortable ignorance.
But the strong, the elite man has better choices. He can be strong enough to resist to the truth, or he can embrace madness, controlling it to his advantage. Indeed the fantastic work of Lovecraft is an eldritch will to transcend the visible world and the narrow vision of the modern man, incapable to face the cosmos.
Michel Houellebecq wrote “Against the world, against life”, an essay about Lovecraft and his work. The two authors have in common disdain for ordinary life and for the modern world, they express it in literature. He explains how Lovecraft wanted to escape this world, this life, and concludes: “The universe, that he intellectually consider indifferent, becomes aesthetically hostile […] He succeeded to transform his disgust of life in an active hostility. Giving an alternative to life in all its form, establishing a permanent opposition, a permanent recourse to the life is the highest mission of the poet on earth. Howard Phillips Lovecraft fulfilled this mission.”
Giving an alternative to life is also the mission of esotericism and occultism. And more often than not, the teaching of the Masters of traditional knowledge, Gurdjieff included, are parallel to the work of Lovecraft.
They are certainly not describing a compassionate and friendly universe, but rather (as anybody with an ounce of common sense can obviously see by himself) a hard and pitiless one, sometimes frightening. "As above, so below" is one of the pillars of traditional wisdom… There are little reasons to expect comfort for the good and weak men after their death, be it in the form of an almighty god or in another. The Masters are telling us different stories:
- “If we knew [...] the vision of this horror would make us lose our sanity. In fact, many men became mad because they glimpsed this reality without adequate preparation.” (Gurdjieff –In search of the miraculous)
- “... [Human beings] stumble along blindly on the road to nowhere – a paved highway witch they themselves bulldoze and make smooth so that they can get faster to the big empty hole which they'll find at the end, waiting to swallow them up. It's a quick and comfortable superhighway, but I know where it's leads to. I've seen it. I've been there in my vision and it makes me shudder to think about it. ” (The Lakota shaman Lame deer)
Developing the self, creating your soul, becoming a higher being is a fundamentally egoist work. Although it is clearly better to develop a “right” mind and although a team work is highly recommended, it cannot be altruist. There’s nothing but logic here: until you are not awake, you are not able to “do”. How could you choose anything, including being altruist? Awaken first, after what you will decide what to do. Nowhere Gurdjieff is calling his students to be good or altruist; to the one who told he was here to learn to help the others, he made it clear that in order to give you first have to be rich. To be able to help you must first be strong enough. He is calling his students, instead, to grasp all the available knowledge and, if necessary, to steal it (In search of the miraculous).
And eventually one may note that, maybe while searching disciples or publishing their works, the Masters are looking quite indifferent to the fate of ordinary men; they live at a higher level, their time is precious. The average men are mechanical, and you cannot help the machines who are not listening to you, nor be really sorry for their doom. The Work is pure Left Hand Path.
Now we realize how these fundamental points are common between Lovecraft and the 4th way: prominence of the occult in our universe, higher forces at work, pitiless nature of the universe, absurdity of ordinary life and giving it an alternative, need and will to transcend reality, and epic struggle to succeed.
It appears that Lovecraft and the 4th way reinforce each other in the Left Hand Path. Using them together, or the first as an aesthetically pleasant illustration of the other, is making sense in an Awakening process.
Ia Ia Cthulhu fhtagn! Remember yourself!