GENIUS NEWS

Welcome to the latest edition of Genius News, a monthly newsletter based on the world's liveliest email forum: Genius-L, now incorporating material from the world's most intelligent web forum, Genius Forum. Genius-L and Genius Forum are forums dedicated to the nature of genius, wisdom and Ultimate Reality, to the total annihilation of false values and the femininity in all of us. That is to say, they are realms intended solely for those who value consciousness.

The one who is a good example to others is often not the one who speaks eloquently in public. He may not be knowledgeable. He may not be clear eyed and fearless. Few will see him as a model for perfection.

We people prefer the person of talent: the sportsperson, the businessperson, the musician, the artist. For these not only have the regular attachments, but have some other-worldly power behind them as well. We adore what we feel is perfect for us.

Unfortunately, skill in any activity, be it poetry, sport, or speaking, is a result of much practice, and such practice has a cost: the cost is God. Any form of success that comes before a strong familiarity with the Infinite has been developed, boosts the ego to a level beyond control. From this position one is lost.

The true man of wisdom turns his back on talent: he is unbound. He loathes attachment as he would an unnecessary burden. However, old habits die hard, and the spiritual man suffers because of his wisdom. His suffering and insecurity often make him a poor and shaky public speaker. He spends so much time thinking of God, when it comes time to speak . . . he has forgotten how. When he does manage a word or two he doesn't speak kindly, so few hear him.

However, the spiritual man is insecure only at first. He gets better as he learns to swim more easily in the sea of the Infinite. When he finally learns to stop swimming and float, his ego dissolves completely. Having eliminated the cause of suffering, his security is transcendent. Now, and only now, can he begin to perfect all the skills necessary to help others in even better ways than he already has. Now he has the spiritual strength to do intellectually demanding things without losing concentration on God, without becoming absorbed in what he is doing, and in the world. Any activity that is without the transcendent strength, inner-quiet, and peace that comes from a wisdom of the Infinite, is performed by a deluded mind. Such banal activity ignores Truth and buries oneself and others deeper into samsara and its hells.

It is not worth the effort trying to justify such blind and wreckless activity; first learn to see, then you are free to be as active as you like.

I beg you, if you want to give your species something of lasting value, then do not seek to become a skillful speaker. The best way to teach is to be an example. Show others the correct priorities by the way you live your life. Such a teaching, without words, is a thousand times more powerful than anything eloquence can produce.

Now imagine the awesome power of the teachings of one who, living a truthful life, develops all the verbal skills as well!

Even so, no matter the spiritual man's wisdom or teaching skills, he will always be hated. When relaxed and eloquent he will be hated for what he says; when nervous with God induced insecurity, he will be hated both for what he says, and for the uneasy way he says it.

All this the spiritual man takes in his stride, which spans entire universes.

As important and significant an attainment as enlightenment is, it is only the beginning of the real story for the spiritual aspirant. Perfection is his ultimate goal. So, what is this perfection and how does one attain to it? Is such a thing even possible? In the following dialogue the notion of perfection is examined, and, hopefully, somewhat explained:

Clinton: David, you're attached to non-attachment. Aren't you?

David Quinn: To the degree I am not perfect, yes.

Tony: We cannot be sure exactly what you mean by "perfect", but assume it means something like deliverance, moksha, realization.

David Quinn: Along those lines. Beyond all delusion. Full, uninterrupted consciousness of Ultimate Reality.

Tony: But it must be pointed out that to the "degree" you are not perfect, anything you may believe about such a state is pure fantasy and conjecture.

David Quinn: It is important to distinguish "perfection" (uninterrupted awareness of Ultimate Reality) and "enlightenment" (temporary awareness of Ultimate Reality). A person may be enlightened, but not yet perfect. He is enlightened in the sense that his intellectual understanding of Reality is flawless and he has learnt the special knack of opening his mind to its fundamental nature. But he isn't perfect because he is unable to remain in this enlightened consciousness indefinitely and repeatedly slips back into (subtle forms of ) delusion.

Enlightenment is essentially a temporary form of perfection and the means by which the imperfect person can gain a sound understanding of perfection.

Tony: Assuming, for the sake of discussion, we accept this formulation despite its unclarity, then falling away from perfection necessarily implies a lack. At best, this lack means you will leave out something essential (otherwise one would never leave the "perfect" state), and more likely you will need to resort to an imperfect (by defintion) memory of the "perfect" state -- delusion is delusion, no matter how "subtle" your own delusions are.

David Quinn: Agreed. On the other hand, the attainment of realization enables one to gain a flawless understanding of perfection, even if only for a short time, which, in turn, provides one with an understanding of the correct path to perfection. So even though the slip back into delusion re-introduces errors into one's understanding, one is still left with the knowledge of the general direction to perfection. While this knowledge will be flawed to some degree, it is good enough to point one in the right direction and enable genuine advances to be made . And then, as time goes on, further experiences of enlightement will refine one's understanding even more.

Tony: Actually, from a practical point of view, the more "subtle" a delusion is, the more difficult it is to recognize and eradicate it (the very definition of subtle - "difficult to detect or grasp by the mind").

David Quinn: It's subtle in the sense that one slips back into delusion imperceptably without even knowing it. It's only at a later date that one realizes what has happened. But once you realize what has happened, it is easy enough to transcend these subtle delusions once more, because, being an enlightened person, one has mastered the knack of entering enlightenment at will.

Tony: Also, we are uncomfortable with your claim that "perfection" is the "Full, uninterrupted consciousness of Ultimate Reality."

This sounds dualistic -- someone is conscious of ultimate reality -- obviously a metaphysical impossibility. It may be a little more accurate to consider it as the realization, or understanding, of the Whole (Absolute).

David Quinn: It may be described in this way, but it would depend on what exactly it is referring to. Words don't really amount to much if the understanding isn't there. From my point of view, there is no essential difffernce between "being conscious of Ultimate Reality" and "realization of the Whole". One cannot understand the Whole without understanding its basic nature, and vice versa.

Tony: That still sounds limiting. Ultimate reality, as infinite, is beyond any essence.

David Quinn: Ultimate Reality is limited by definition. It is limited by the fact that it isn't ultimate falseness, for example. Having said that, I agree that Ultimate Reality isn't an essence. It is beyond all form and thus it is beyond all essence. Still, one has to use words if one wishes to talk about it (Ultimate Reality), and it's fair enough to say that it constitutes the essence of Nature (meaning that it goes to the heart of everything that exists in Nature) - so long as one keeps in mind that, yes, Ultimate Reality doesn't actually constitute an essence.

Jim: But like you said perfect would mean never being imperfect. Therefore either it isn't a requirement of enlightenment or once you have conceived perfection there can't be any improvement to enlightenment.

David Quinn: Well, it is impossible to become perfect without first being enlightened. Perfection is too profound for the ordinary mind to grasp. You need to leave behind the many conventional and false mental frameworks that overwhelm the ordinary person before you can discern its essence. That is, you need the vision and understanding of enlightenment.

The difficult thing about the spiritual path isn't so much the conceiving of perfection (which is relatively easy), but the process of bringing every aspect of one's existence into conformity with it. We have millions of years of evolution programmed into us that is incompatible with perfection and it is a long, hard slog to overpower this programming. We didn't evolve to be spiritual beings. We evolved to be emotional, egotistical beings who love nothing more than a bunch of attachments to protect and distract us.

Jim: In either case, I feel that is not enlightenment as we have to grow to enlightenment which I personally feel never stops.

David Quinn: The only thing that never stops is Nature itself. Everything else is impermanent, including delusion and imperfection.

Jim: There can't be a limit to enlightenment if it is infinite and can never be fully attained.

David Quinn: Enlightenment isn't infinite. Only Nature is infinite. Granted, it is through enlightenment that we become one with the infinity of Nature, but the actual state of enlightenment is finite in terms of time (it begins and ends in time) and space (it is confined to enlightened people).

Jim: An alternate reality would still be a term of continued enlightenment. Delusion is still a path to enlightenment even if it be a round about way. We all have a degree of ilusionment if not for any other reason then to imagine someone sitting on the side of this terminal squatting in the outback reading our attempt of enlightenment.

David Quinn: There needn't be any illusion here. For example, I'm fully cognizant of the fact that I can never know whether other people really exist and are conscious. It's something that I can't prove or disprove with absolute certainty. So I treat it as a "provisional truth"- that is, as a plausible theory that could well be misguided. There is a lot of evidence to suggest that other people exist, but not enough to make it incontrovertible. The person who understands this point is not under any illusion regarding this matter.

So in short, I disagree that we are eternally condemned to being trapped in illusion. We can, via the process of reasoning correctly, free ourselves from all illusion, which is what I call perfection.

Tony: So, what sort of process is "perfection"?

David Quinn: The process of being perfectly in tune with Ultimate Reality in all aspects of one's existence. To be beyond all possibility of slipping into delusion. The perfect person is perfectly aligned to the flow of Nature. He is utterly transparant in this regard. Not one part of him is at odds with it.

Tony: If it were simply a matter of ratiocination, couldn't one simply reason one's way to it?

David Quinn: One can certainly reason one's way into enlightenment (temporary perfection), but the path to perfection (permanent enlightenment) is more a matter of desire and will than reason. This is not to say that reason is unimportant in this matter. On the contrary, it is vital. But without a strong will, it becomes limited.

Tony: And how does an "experience" arise?

David Quinn: The experience of enlightenment, you mean? It arises when one's intellectual understanding of Reality loses its last remaining flaws and reaches perfection.

Tony: Are you implying that "perfection" is more psychological than logical?

David Quinn: A combination of the two. Some people are very logical in their thought-processes and yet have limited vision due to psychological reasons - most academics, for example. A person is in a position to reach enlightenment when he has the psychological desire to understand what is ultimately true in life and is prepared to give his reason free reign. This, of course, is an exceedingly rare occurance.

Tony: How do you realize your delusion? Is that a psychological or biological process, an intuition, a matter of good fortune, or what? Obviously, unless you become aware of the delusion, you cannot will enlightenment.

David Quinn: You realize it through the use of memory. You remember the existence of enlightenment and, through this, you become aware that you are not there. You then automatically recall the knowledge of how to re-enter enlightenment.

It happened that a fire broke out backstage in a theater. The clown came out to inform the public. They thought it was just a jest and applauded. He repeated his warning, they shouted even louder. So I think that the world will come to an end amid general applause from all the wits, who believe that it is a joke.

The gods were bored, and so they created man. Adam was bored because he was alone, and so Eve was created. From that moment on, boredom entered the world and increased in proportion to the increase of the population. Adam was bored alone; then Adam and Even were bored together; then Adam and Eve and Cain and Abel were bored en famille; then the population of the world increased and the people were bored en masse. To divert themselves they conceived the idea of constructing a tower high enough to reach the heavens. This idea is itself as boring as the tower was high, and constitutes a terrible proof of how boredom gained the upper hand.....

A thinker erects an immense building, a system, a system which embraces the whole of existence and world-history, etc - and if we contemplate his personal life, we discover to our astonishment this terrible and ludicrous fact, that he himself personally does not live in this immense high-vaulted palace, but in a barn alongside of it, or in a dog-kennel, or at most the porter's lodge. If one were to take the liberty of calling his attention to this by a single word, he would be offended. For he has no fear of being under a delusion, if only he can get the system completed .........by means of the delusion.

They say that love makes blind, and by this they explain the phenomenon. In case a man going into a dark room to fetch something were to reply to my advice that he carry a light by saying, "The thing I am seeking is only a trifle, therefore I carry no light" - ah, then I could understand him perfectly. On the other hand, when the same man takes me aside and confides in me in a mysterious manner that the thing he went to fetch was of the utmost importance, and therefore he could do it blindly - ah, I wonder how my poor mortal head might be able to follow the high flight of his speech. Even if for fear of offending him I might refrain from laughter, as soon as his back was turned I could not help laughing. But at love nobody laughs.

Is knowledge changed when it is applied? - Let us imagine a pilot, and assume that he had passed every examination with distinction, but that he had not as yet been at sea. Imagine him in a storm; he knows everything he ought to do, but he has not known how terror grips the seafarer when the stars are lost in the blackness of night; he has not known the sense of impotence that comes when the pilot sees the wheel in his hand become a plaything for the waves; he has not known how the blood rushes to the head when one tries to make calculations at such a moment; in short, he has no conception of the change that takes place when he has to apply his knowledge .......

A king sometimes has a royal theater reserved for himself, but the difference which here exludes the ordinary citizen is accidental. It is otherwise when we speak of God and the royal theater He has for Himself. The ethical development of the individual constitutes the little private theater where God is indeed a spectator, but where the individual is also a spectator from time to time, although essentially he is an actor, whose task is not to deceive but to reveal, just as all ethical development consists of becoming more apparent before God.

Sexual assaults by adults against children in South Africa have almost doubled in two years, prompted probably, say officials, by a growing belief in the countryside that having sex with a virgin will cure an HIV-positive man. According to a health official in Durban: "We have no idea where this idea has come from, but it has been around for a few years and has certainly taken hold," especially in view of the country's sharp increase in AIDS cases. The country was stunned in early November when six men, attempting to "protect" themselves, were charged with the rape of a baby.

Comment: This story is a graphic example of the suffering that is caused in the world by ignorance and superstition. No good can ever come of either. That people will do whatever it takes to protect themselves from perceived danger, arising from irrational thoughts, is one of the more salient features of the history of the religious mentality. And yet, the world is still more inclined to encourage superstition than reason. Our perceived right to bring about the conditions of suffering seemingly outweighs our desire to alleviate them.

The FBI has recently inquired of several psychics who had worked in the past with U.S. intelligence as "remote viewers," hoping that they would be able to foresee terrorist attacks, according to a November report in The Times of London. The federal government had a long-running remote-viewing program, run by California's Stanford Research Institute, until it was shut down in 1995.

Comment: It makes you wonder why anyone would be surprised that any serious failure of American security and intelligence agencies might occur when you see stories like this one. It also does little to evoke confidence is said agencies.

The Harry Potter blockbuster about an English boy wizard could be bad for small children, a German conservative politician warned Tuesday.

"The Harry Potter film is concerned with the occult and black magic and I don't think that it is a suitable topic for children under 10 years old," Benno Zierer, a Christian Social Union MP, told Reuters Television.

"It is not a fairy tale and it could have negative influences on the further development of children."

Zierer, who comes from the Catholic southern region of Bavaria, said he was particularly concerned about children seeing crosses turned the wrong way up in "Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone."

"If a child is accompanied or if parents talk with their child before the film then that might be alright, but otherwise a six-year-old could come out and not know what is reality."

A witchcraft controversy brewing in a North Dakota town forced a local school to cancel a field trip to a screening of the new Harry Potter movie on Friday.

About 100 students from Agassiz Middle School in Fargo were slated to attend the opening day of the widely anticipated movie, "Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone," which revolves around the adventures of a young wizard in a world of nonmagical mortals known as muggles.

All the students, mainly aged between 12 and 15, had parental permission to attend the trip to a local movie house during school hours.

But a few concerned parents and one local radio personality successfully killed the trip after raising concerns about the movie's depiction of witchcraft.

The fact that some consider witchcraft a religion, the protesters said, meant that the school-led trip to the movie theater would constitute a violation of the separation of church and state and possibly lead to legal action.

"It's a little bizarre," said Fargo School Superintendent David Flowers, who supported the field trip. "We believe that we were on firm ground in letting the kids go. But (the school) made the decision ... that they would just as soon not be embroiled in a controversy."

Meanwhile in Memphis at least two Catholic schools said they were keeping the series of "Harry Potter" books by author J.K. Rowling out of their libraries because of the witches and wizardry content.

Comment: Whilst these stories obviously represent the extreme end of the spectrum of Christian concerns regarding this harmless literary figure, it is nevertheless amazing to me that it should exist at all. But be in no doubt that it has nothing to do with fears about the supernatural or magic or any such matters; it is all about the fear of competition for the souls, minds and imaginations of the young. No-one is their right mind could possibly hold up the Bible as a literary work that the young should read so as to avoid contact with the "darker" side of reality. It is all about the desire to control the direction in which children take their imagination. It is all about the desire to suffocate that imagination with the pillows of pre-established images and beliefs. Religion is suffocating to any child; it does not speak to nor does it encourage the enormous capacity the young mind has for conjuring a world in which to play and consider possibilities. What kind of a person wants to suffocate their children?

Is marriage compatible with genius? In other words, is it possible for a husband or a wife to cultivate genius? I'd say that it would be very, very unlikely.

As every married couple knows, the secret to ensuring a happy, successful marriage is compromise, and compromise is the death of genius. Each partner has to take into account the feelings and wishes of the other, while frequently neglecting or suppressing his own inclinations, and has to submerge his own individuality for the sake of the "team". This alone kills off genius, not to mention all the other things which invariably attend marriage - the career, the children, the mortagage, the possessions, the networking, and all the other equally useless distractions.

The cultivation of genius requires maximum freedom and independence. One needs to have the complete freedom to follow one's thoughts wherever they lead, to put into practice the fruits of one's thinking, and to go against the grain in an attempt to develop the art of perfect truthfulness. But this is virtually impossible if one is always having to consider the happiness of one's spouse and the well-being of the marriage in general.

No genius that I know of has ever married. True, Socrates did marry, but to his credit he neglected his wife and children and did not provide for them. They were left to fend for themsleves in poverty while he spent his days and nights practising the Truth, so I can forgive him his youthful lapse of judgment.

I personally make it a rule to avoid married people. I never let them into my house if I can possibly help it, and if one of them ever reaches out to touch me I automatically recoil in horror as if being touched by a leper. For there is one thing which is common to virtually all married people and it is this: they stink of death. Their every pore reeks of the mediocrity and soullessness which grips this world.

In short, marriage is a good yardstick for measuring one's potential for genius. If you're not utterly repulsed by it, then your future looks very bleak indeed.

There is also a lot to be said for comparing love to a drug. Marriage and heroin-addiction are very similar when you think about it. For example:

When a man first starts injecting himself with herion he experiences great euphoria, but over time his daily fixes become less euphoric and more mundane.

When a man first falls in love he also experiences great euphoria, only for it to fade away to the the level of the mundane (usually not long after the wedding ceremony).

The heroin addict is required to go out and commit crimes every day in order to pay for his habit.

The married man has to go out every day and slave away at some mind-numbing job in order to pay for his sexual/emotional fix.

The heroin-addict becomes violently aggressive the moment someone attempts to deny them their fix.

The married man becomes violently aggressive the moment he sees another man make advances upon his wife.

When a heroin-addict is denied his fix he experiences great suffering associated with withdrawal symptoms.

When a man's wife leaves him for another man, he experiences great suffering associated with withdrawal symptoms.

There are four kinds of knowledge: Appearance-knowledge, relative-knowledge, perfect-knowledge, and Transcendental Intelligence. Appearance-knowledge belongs to the ignorant and simple-minded who are addicted to the notion of being and non-being, and who are frightened at the thought of being unborn. It attaches itself to the multiplicity of objects; it is characterized by attainability and accumulation; it is subject to birth and destruction.

Relative-knowledge belongs to the mind-world of the philosophers. It arises from the mind's ability to consider the relations which appearances bear to each other and to the mind considering them; it arises from the mind's ability to arrange, combine and analyse these relations by its powers of discursive logic and imagination, by reason of which it is able to peer into the meaning and significance of things.

Perfect-knowledge belongs to the world of the Bodhisattvas who recognize that all things are but manifestations of mind; who clearly understand the emptiness, the unbornness, the egolessness of all things, and who have entered into the truth of imagelessness. Perfect-knowledge differentiates the Boddhisattva stages and is the pathway and the entrance into the exalted state of self-realization of Noble Wisdom. To those who realize this knowledge, the world is like a vision and a dream, it is like the birth and death of a barren-woman's child; to them, there is nothing evolving and nothing disappearing.

The wise who cherish Perfect-knowledge may be divided into three classes: disciples, masters and Arhats. Common disciples continue to cherish the notion of individuality and generality; masters rise from common disciples when, forsaking the error of individuality and generality, they still cling to the notion of an ego-soul by reason of which they go off by themselves into retirement abnd solitude. Arhats arise when the error of discrimination is realized and a "turning-about" takes place within the deepest consciousness. Mind, thus emancipated, enters into perfect self-realization of Noble Wisdom.

But if you assert that there is such a thing as Noble Wisdom, it no longer holds good, because anything of which something is asserted thereby partakes of the nature of being and is thus characterized with the quality of birth. The very assertion: "All things are unborn" destroys the truthfulness of it. The same is true of the statements: "All things are empty", and, "All things have no self-nature" - both are untenable when put in the form of assertions. All assertions and negations, being thought-constructions, are unborn. Even the assertion that Universal Mind and Noble Wisdom are Ultimate Reality, is a thought-construction and therefore unborn. As "things", there is no Universal Mind, no Noble Wisdom, no Ultimate Reality. The insight of the wise who move about in the realm of imagelessness and its solitude is pure. That is, for the wise all "things" are wiped away and even the state of imagelessness ceases to exist.

Irena: Seems to me, enlightenment that can be measured by another, an observer, is like the tip of the iceberg to the totality of the observed's totality, including of course his/her degree of enlightenment. Particularly on an email list.

Matt Gregory: Well, I think a person's actions/speech pretty much expose that person for what they are. I don't think you can hide who you are from a perceptive person.

David Quinn: What Irena says is true in a sense, but only for women. A woman has no ego, no intregrated personality, no logical coherence in her mental life aside from what has been inserted into her by men. Her mind is largely made up of discontinuous thoughts held loosely together by feelings and random association. Because of this, there is much truth to the assertion that a woman's speech doesn't reflect what is going on inside her.

A woman's mind is to her speech what chaos is to the organized forms it spits out. And just as you can't discern the nature of chaos from the forms it produces, neither can you discern a woman's mind from what she says.

By contrast, a man does have an ego and an integrated personality, and thus everything he says is an expression of his values and character. He can therefore be read like an open book by the perceptive observer, whereas a woman's mind is almost entirely opaque. (On the other hand, once you understand the essentially random, egoless nature of the woman's mind, you automatially gain a complete understanding of every women who has ever lived. You don't need to listen a single thing a woman says in order to understand her mind. Such a methodology is irrelevant and completely misunderstands her nature.)

Even when a man is lying skilfully, he can be easily read, because nothing he says is ever not tainted with his beliefs and values. But a woman's mind always remains opaque, even when she is speaking honestly and truthfully.

According to Otto Weininger, women have no spirituality in them at all. He suggested that the well-known female mystics and saints of the past were nothing more than hysterical women. Here are some interesting snippets from his book "Sex and Character" which touch on this subject. (The square brackets contain page numbers) :

--

It is from nothing more nor less than the phenomenon of match-making from which we may be able to infer most correctly the real nature of woman. This desire to bring about an understanding between two people is possessed by all women from their earliest childhood. [154]

The idea of pairing is the only conception which has positive worth for women. The woman is the bearer of the thought of the continuity of the species. The high value which she attaches to the idea of pairing is not selfish and individual, it is super-individual, and, if I may be forgiven the desecration of the phrase, it is the transcendental function of woman.[158]

The breathless pleasure with which the various obstacles are overcome, the feeling of disappointment at each thwarting of the sexual purpose, is altogether womanish and unmanly; but it is always present with woman. She is continually on the watch for sexual developments, whether in real life or in literature. [155-156]

As a rule, the woman adapts herself to the man, his views become hers, his likes and dislikes are shared by her, every word he says is an incentive to her, and the stronger his sexual influence on her the more this is so. Woman does not perceive that this influence which man has on her causes her to deviate from the line of her own development; she does not look upon it as a sort of unwarrantable intrusion; she does not try to shake off what is really an invasion of her private life; she is not ashamed of being receptive; on the contrary, she is really pleased when she can be so, and prefers man to mould her mentally. She rejoices in being dependent, and her expectations from man resolve themselves into the moment when she may be perfectly passive.

But it is not only from her lover (although she would like that best), but also from her father and mother, uncles and aunts, brothers and sisters, near relations and distant acquaintances, that a woman takes what she thinks and believes, being only too glad to get her opinions “ready made.” [159]

A woman's thoughts and actions have no definite, independent relation to things in themselves; they are not the result of the reaction of her individuality to the world. They accept what is imposed on them gladly, and adhere to it with the greatest firmness. That is why woman is so intolerant when there has been a breach of conventional laws. [159]

It is the universal passivity of woman’s nature which makes her accept and assume man's valuations of things although these are utterly at variance with her nature. The way in which woman can be impregnated with the masculine point of view, the saturation of her innermost thoughts with a foreign element, her false recognition of morality, which cannot be called hypocrisy because it does not conceal anything anti-moral, her assumption and practise of things which in themselves are not in her realm, are all very well if the woman does not try to use her own judgment, and they succeed in keeping up the fiction of her superior morality. [160]

One cannot artificially suppress and supplant one's real nature, the physical as well as the other side, without something happening. The hygienic penalty that must be paid for woman's denial of her real nature is hysteria. [161]

Hysteria shows that untruthfulness, however far it may reach, cannot suppress everything. By education or environment woman adopts a whole system of ideas and valuations which are foreign to her, or, rather, has patiently submitted to have them impressed on her; and it would need a tremendous shock to get rid of this strongly rooted psychical complexity, and to transplant woman from that condition of intellectual helplessness which is so characteristic of hysteria.

An extraordinary shock suffices to destroy the artificial structure, and to place woman in the arena to undertake a fight between her unconscious, oppressed nature, and her certainly conscious but unnatural mind. The see-sawing which now begins between the two explains the unusual psychic discontinuity during the hysterical phase, the continual changes of mood, none of which are subject to the control of a dominant, central, controlling nucleus of individuality. It is extraordinary how many contradictions can co-exist in the hysterical. Sometimes they are highly intelligent and able to judge correctly and keenly oppose hypnotism and so forth. Then, again, they are excited by most trivial causes, and are most subject to hypnotic trances. Sometimes they are abnormally chaste, at other times extremely sensual.

All this is no longer difficult to explain. The absolute sincerity, the painful love of truth, the avoidance of everything sexual, the careful judgment, and the strength of will all these form part of that spurious personality which woman in her passivity has taken upon herself to exhibit to herself and to the world at large. Everything that belongs to her original temperament and her real sense form that ‘other self,” that “unconscious mind” which can delight in obscurities and which is so open to suggestion. [162]

The current opinion that woman is religious is equally erroneous. Female mysticism, when it is anything more than mere superstition, is either thinly veiled as in numberless spiritualists and theosophists, or it is a mere passive and unconscious acceptance of man's religious views which are clung to the more firmly because of woman's natural disinclination for them. The lover is readily transformed into a Saviour; very readily (as is well known to be the case with many nuns) the Saviour becomes the lover. All the great women visionaries known to history were hysterical; the most famous, Santa Teresa, was not misnamed “the patron saint of hysteria.” [168]

If woman's religiousness were genuine, and if it proceeded from her own nature, she would have done something great in the religious world; but she never has done anything of any importance. [168]

Diablo: Inserted into her by men. Heh heh. A woman seems to me to be just as much a construction of her environment as a man. I don't believe that women are as you describe. A pool of stored data, squirting here and there without cause or provocation. Mere toys, meat puppets. At least, no more so than men.

David Quinn: All things are a constitution of the environment, but this doesn't mean that all things have identical characteristics. A powder puff is as much a product of the environment as a mighty oak.

Diablo: So you are saying women are chaotic. I agree but only to say that men are equally so.

David Quinn: No, I wouldn't say that women's mind are chaotic. I would describe them as "flowie" - that is, constantly changing in an aimless fashion. Aside from the flow, the organizing principle of their minds is partly emotional/biological and partly what has been impregnated into them by masculine consciousness. Logical thought barely exists inside them. If a woman displays logical coherence in her words, you can be sure that its ultimate source has been the words of past men in her life, or from books, etc. Women don't think, they regurgitate.

Diablo: Someone taught me to think logically. I learned my problem solving techniques from others and from books. Should I have learned them myself?

David Quinn: The difference with men is that logical reasoning becomes central to his thought-processes (even when he is reasoning poorly), while with woman it is never more than an adjunct. Men treat reason with a seriousness that is entirely unknown to a woman. He has the utmost respect for logic, whereas it is nothing for a woman to abandon logic at the drop of a hat.

A woman's relationship with logic is purely sexual in nature. It either overwhelms her (via the words of another) or it doesn't feature in her life at all.

Diablo: Every woman I know has a personality and a desire to improve herself and her environment. They have varying strategies but a similar goal.

David Quinn: It's been instilled into them by society, by men. Self-improvement is a masculine goal which women have mindlessly incorporated. Even then, it merely expresses itself in the sexual field - in the desire for a more attractive appearance, a more popular kind of personality, etc.

Diablo: And what is the difference between an integrated and disintegrated personality?

David Quinn: The crucial factor is consciousness. The mental contents of an intergrated personality are bound together by consciousness in a way that doesn't occur in women. An intergrated personality has far greater memory and reasoning capacity, and a far greater sense of its own destiny. Everything inside the mind of an intergrated personality is logically connected together, even if it contains contradictions, and is bound together by a central ego, whereas a woman's consciousness consists of millions of isolated thought-forms and intuitions, connected together only by emotions, random associations and the masculine consciousness of those she has met in the past.

If there were no men in the world, then it is likely that the mind of a woman would completely fall apart, and she would be ruled entirely by her sexual nature.. She depends, for her psychological centre, on men. Unless she had enough masculinity inside her to form her own centre, her mind would degenerate into a kind of formless insanity, and would so without her knowledge

Diablo: And why would women lack an ego?

David Quinn: It goes back to the circumstances of our evolution. Men originally were the defenders of the tribe, as well as its warriors, and thus evolved to assume the positions of power and responsibility in society. Women had no need to develop an ego because they had no responsibilities, apart from those that were determined by men.

Also, men have selectively bred women over the millennia to be as egoless as possible. A man doesn't want to snuggle up to a competing ego at night. It wouldn't be enjoyable. It would cause too much friction and suffering. He is looking for a comforting refuge when he becomes intimate with a woman, not another rival. He already gets enough rivalry out there in the world.

As a result, women's egos are undeveloped, much like how a young child's ego is undeveloped. They are not entirely without ego, just as they are not entirely without masculinity. But it is debateable whether any woman in history has ever become masculine enough to form an ego.

Diablo: When I think of ego, I think of the Id, Ego, and Super Ego. I don't know what you mean by ego though.

David Quinn: In this instance, it means a consciousness that is developed enough to relate everything it experiences to a central idea. A person with an ego is in conscious connection with everything he experiences, while the egoless woman can barely relate what she experiences in the present to what she experienced five minutes ago. She is constantly changing from moment to moment, and so the person she was five minutes ago has very little relationship to the person she is now. The person with an ego, by contrast, retains the same form throughout his experiences

Diablo: Women are as easy to read as men. Posture, rhythm, eyes (where they look and pupil size), lip fullness, hands, legs, breathing... It's all there. It speaks loudly for anyone who knows what to listen for.

David Quinn: Sure, one can slot women into various categories based on their appearance and behaviour. But that is still on a very superficial level. It is like slotting dogs into their various breeds. But whatever their differences, a dog still remains a dog.

Diablo: Of course, you have diagnosed women as opaque and thusly, excuse yourself from learning their individual natures. Also, by claiming each woman is the same you absolve yourself of any reason to dig deeper. Having found the truth, you must feel quite satisfied.

David Quinn: Either that or you are immersing yourself in the superficial complexities of women in order to block out the knowledge of their essential nature. Most men would be horrified if they knew the truth about their girlfriends and wives.

A person must act in such a way that the whole of his individuality lies in each moment.

Only from within himself can a person know the depth of the world; the interconnections of the world lie in him.

The human being cannot even bear to look into the sun - so weak and immature is he.

The distinguishing mark of all that is human: seeking for reality. All distinctions between people are established where reality is sought and found.

Many a person believes that he has become free of the one God, because he has pledged himself to several others.

Life is a kind of voyage through the space of the inner ego, naturally a voyage from a narrow homeland to the most comprehensive, free, overview of the universe.

Age is death, youth is life. The greater a person is, the less he ages, and the less his will gets weaker with age.

A person lives until he enters either into the absolute or into nothingness. He, himself, determines his future life in freedom: he chooses God or nothingness. He abolishes himself, or he adapts himself to eternal life. For him, a double progress is possible: one toward eternal life (to perfect wisdom and holiness, to a state fully adequate to the idea of the true and the good), and one toward eternal annihilation. However, he continually advances in one of those two directions; there is no third.

People can be divided into seekers and priests, and there is much to be gained from this division. The seeker searches, the priest informs. The seeker searches above all for himself, the priest unburdens himself above all to others. The seeker searches his whole life long for himself, for his own soul; the priest's ego is given from the outset as a presupposition of everything else. The seeker is always accompanied by a feeling of imperfection; the priest is convinced of the existence of perfection.

Only seekers are vain (and sensitive). For vanity arises from the need to find, and from the feeling that one has not yet found - not yet found oneself. The priest is not vain, he does not easily feel hurt, and had no need for external recognition, because this support is not necessary for him. On the other hand, he has a need for fame. A presupposition of the need for fame is inner self-certainty; it is his nature to offer his ego as perfect as possible for others, and thus to connect himself to them. Fame is thus related to sacrifice.

Sensuousness is what the priest descends to, while the seeker wants to ascend from it to spirituality. That is why the priest has a really strong relationship to nature; for the priest comes from the spirit and tries to bring the world in line with him. Everything should shine brightly, like the flame within himself. The seeker, on the other hand, much more than the priest, has a relationship to society. He is a social being because he seeks himself in others. Only the seeker stands in a deep relationship to culture, to law, the state and morality.

The priest has revelation on his side, and daylight is within him. The seeker strives upward towards it, but is still blind. The priest is already in alliance with the godhead; only he knows the mystical experience (extreme seekers, like Kant, or even better Fichte, do not know such things). The absolute, the divinity, is given to the priest as a precondition, as a treasure or a pledge from on high; it is given to the seeker as a value, as a goal.

Nietzsche was a seeker for a long time; only as Zarathustra did he put on the priest's robes, and only now there descend from the mountain those discourses which prove how much certainty he has gained from the transformation. The experiences of the priest (as seer!) are more intense than those of the seeker; and that is why he is more sure of himself. He feels himself to be the chosen messenger from the sun, moon and stars, and only listens in order to understand their language as fully as feels it his duty.

Faith is saying: I believe this, not because I have been able to demonstrate this is so through a rational, logical process, but because I want it to be so, so badly that I can not accept that reality is not like this. Or, I believe it because I read it in a book. I believe it because someone told it to me. Faith is believing something that you don't actually have reason to believe is true (since if you had reason, you wouldn't need faith). Faith is the opposite of truly thinking for yourself. Accepting that faith is actually a good thing is the key nastiness that religions impose on followers. Everything else flows from that corrupt idea. If you can get someone to accept that someone else should do their thinking for them, that they are not qualified to think for themselves, then you can get them to accept anything. It's surprisingly easy to convince people that faith is good. Apparently, thinking for one's self is a responsibility people are all too happy to give up. David Hodges

Nationalism has its foundation in ego. The ego attaches itself to all kinds of things so as to reinforce its reality, to ground itself in reality. Nationalism in really no different than an allegiance to family, or one's street or suburb, or one's city or State. We express this kind of jingoism in a great many ways, all of which also create an "us and them" mentality. Have you noticed how little an attachment people have to humanity itself? Humanity as an entity? This is because there is no "them", no scope to build a contrast, nowhere for an attachment to really "stick". If intelligent life were to be found on Mars (speaking entirely hypothetically) and especially if there was the perception of some potential "threat" from this life, then all of a sudden you we see the arising of a "human nationalism".

But this process of the ego attaching itself to arbitrarily constructed groupings is delusional because it is done in response to a sense of separation that does not exist in the first place. Dan Rowden

Some local school children in Brisbane recently did an experiment to examine the nature of McDonald's food. They placed a Mac cheese burger and a regular hamburger from a diner in a seperate glass box for six months. While the regular hamburger started going bad after three days and quickly became a putrid mess, the cheese burger showed few signs of decay, even after six months. Save for a covering of mold, the shape of the burger was intact .......David Quinn

Regardless, the work of Weininger and Paglia and others is not a condemnation of humans who were born female in the way that, for example, the Taliban condemns women. To the contrary, the works of Weininger and Paglia are attempts to awaken the female to masculinity. No human being should have to serve as sexual fodder for another. No human being should have to compromise himself. No human being should be required to wear a burka. No human being should be subservient to another human being. All human beings should be capable of standing on their own two feet. All human beings should be self supporting. No human being should have to beguile another into subsidizing him.

This is not misogyny but feminism in the pure sense of the word. It is want for an ideal world. It is want for autonomy. It is want for reality in lieu of romance. It is want to remove from the feminine the chains of delusion.

A woman is not a goddess. Yet, she has been used as such -- and women have perpetuated this myth and encouraged it.

One begins to understand why Weininger saw fit to end his life at such a young age. It is disheartening to recognize and comprehend the slavery imposed on life and to find oneself at a loss for relief from it. Marsha Faizi

I'm no different to anyone else in this regard. I remember when I was young (so much younger than today...) I used to think every girl/woman that I was attracted to was, or potentialy was, my soulmate. The funny thing is: how does one determine who is a soul mate when your own nature is not static? She whom you decide is your lifelong mate this week may become the sort of person who shits you you tears the week thereafter.

I remember a line from a Sammy Davis Jnr song which goes somehting like: "How can I be right for somebody else if I'm not right for me?" I'm not usually one for quoting crappy song lyrics but I think that line is applicable.

Who are we to drag someone into the chaos of our lives and call it "love"? The other point I want to make about entering into a love relationship with someone is the ethics of acting in such a way as to ensure their future suffering. That is, when you allow, or more to the point, encourage a person to develop an egotistical attachment to you, you are necessarily sowing the seeds of their future suffering, in that they will suffer either for the fear of perhaps losing you, or for the actual fact of losing you (when you leave or die).

Is it ethical to do such a thing merely for the sake of your own egotistical benefit? Indeed, how many people even stop to consider this dimension of their behaviour? Dan Rowden

What I find comical about the whole idea of finding a "soul-mate" is how easily people seem to find them. You would think that out of a world-wide population of six billion, the chances of finding your perfect soul-mate were exceedingly slim. And yet people everywhere seem to have the knack of finding their one and only beloved in their local neighbourhood or work-place or even the nearest bar. Quite astounding when you think about it.

Many people would call this destiny, but I would be inclined to call it desperation. All it requires is for the man and woman in question to share one or two values for them to jump to the conclusion that they are "soul-mates", and, in so doing, block out the fact there is an enormous chasm between them. It is only later, when they are married and the pleasures of love no longer shine so brightly, that they see begin to see their mistake. Which is when they start fighting. David Quinn

All images in this publication are taken from "The Devil's Gallery" http://www.theabsolute.net

Compiled and edited by David Quinn davidquinn000@optusnet.com.au and Dan Rowden danrowden@optusnet.com.au

Disclaimer: editorial opinions expressed in this publication are those of its authors and do not, necessarily, reflect the views of subscribers to Genius-L. Dialogues adapted from Genius-L and Genius Forum have been edited for the purpose of brevity and clarity. Certain spelling mistakes and typographical errors have been corrected to preserve meaning.

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