Young Hunger

Yes, for sure. People have reached out in a new way. It happens in letters and emails, but also at the merch table. At almost every show, actually, someone would come up to me with tears in their eyes. And they were specific about the details of their experience, which makes sense, since I had put my own experiences out there in such an explicit way. It was mutually beneficial: I was telling my story to them, and they were sharing theirs with me.

It was a strange thing. Going on tour and playing those shows, people were coming to me and saying, “My fiancé died three weeks ago.” At the time, I was about nine months out from death; I was already doing a little better and I had a different look on my face. But people were hearing this album that was written from the blast zone, so when I went out, I sort of had to step backward and re-inhabit that time. It was hard, and super intense, but I felt like it was my responsibility. I tried to stay with it as best I could. I didn’t retreat from it.

Yes. Days like yesterday make me feel like that. I was just trying to do my songs. There’s nothing I can do.

The theme of this issue is hedonism.

I don’t even know what that word means...

Unadulterated joy. What does hedonism mean to you?

Creating things. That’s the one time where, if it’s working out, then man do I feel good. I think I’ve felt that way since I was a kid. It makes me feel better about everything. I never think about what I’m doing. I just pick something up, try it and if it turns out, then fuck yeah!

Artists must commune with their own kind all the time. There are no exceptions to this rule, even if you live “out in the woods.” Preferably commune in person, but online is more than fine. It doesn’t matter where you live: big city, small city, little town. You will fight and love together; you will develop new languages together and give each other comfort, conversation, and the strength to carry on. This is how you will change the world — and your art.

To protect yourselves, form small gangs. Protect one another no matter what; this gang will allow all of you to go out into and take over parts of the world. Argue, sleep with, love, hate, get sick of your fellow gang members. Whatever happens, you need one another — for now. Protect the weakest artist in your gang, because there are people in the gang who think you’re the weak one.”

At mankind’s present stage of development, the esoteric knowledge cannot be more than a working hypothesis where most people are concerned. But the further mankind develops, the more obvious its incomparable superiority will become.

System is thought’s way of orienting itself. Facts are largely useless until reason can fit them into their correct contexts (historical, logical, psychological, or causal ones). All rational thinking is based on principles and systems. Every thinking man has made his own system, whether he knows it or not. Systems afford a correct apprehension of ground and consequence of thinking, as well as of cause and effect of objective realities. The quality of the system shows the individual’s level of development, his ability of judgement, and his knowledge of facts. Most people’s systems are the belief systems of emotional thinking which no facts can upset. Thereby the individual has reached his point of maturity, the limit of his receptivity, being captive in the prison of his own thoughts.

Ignorance about existence is so great that the dogmatic systems of theology, the speculative systems of philosophy, and the primitive hypothesis systems of science have all been accepted as satisfactory explanations.

The inquirers into truth examine the original facts or basic hypotheses of the existing systems, to what extent any system does not contradict itself, its consequences, and its ability to explain rationally.

Many people find esoterics self-evident the moment they first come into contact with it. This is because knowledge, as Platon maintained, is remembrance anew. Everything which we are able immediately to grasp, comprehend, understand, we have assimilated in previous incarnations. Also qualities and abilities once acquired remain latently, until they are given opportunities to develop in some new incarnation. Understanding of the old remains as well as the turn for skills. One of many examples of this is the genius, an otherwise incomprehensible phenomenon.

The esoterician presents his system to those who have remained seekers, not being satisfied with the ruling systems. He quietly awaits the day when science will have ascertained so many formerly esoteric facts that it will no longer be possible for it to refuse to accept esoterics as the only really tenable working hypothesis.

One inestimable value, among others, of the esoteric knowledge is that it frees from the superstitions and spurious knowledge of ignorance, from illusions and fictions (conceptions without correspondences in reality). Another is that it entails a complete revaluation of all the values of life as a necessary consequence of knowing the meaning and goal of life.

The Indians, on the other hand, simply accept secrecy as a necessity. Several thousand years of experience have taught them that one must not "cast pearls", and they do not.

And this for the simple reasons that exact comprehension calls for considerable qualifications, and that all knowledge which confers power is abused by those in a position to use power for their own good.

There are many kinds of yogis in India. The highest kind is unknown except to special initiates. The yogis of whom Westerners hear are mostly members of the Ramakrishna Mission. They teach the philosophy of Sankhya and Vedanta as expounded by Ramakrishna. The highest yogis are initiates who pass on their knowledge only to a few select disciples under the strictest vows of secrecy. They regard all Westerners as barbarians and consider it a profanation of their knowledge to reveal anything of it to those ignorant, incurably skeptical, scornfully and arrogantly superior, curious people, who abuse the knowledge the moment they think they have understood it and who, moreover, place all their knowledge at the service of barbarism and at the disposal of bandits.

The Indian’s attitude to life is the exact opposite of the Westerner’s. Whereas to the Westerner the physical world is the only one that exists, to the Indian the superphysical reality is the essential one. It is the higher material worlds that constitute the material basis of physical matter and the causes of the processes of nature exist in those higher worlds.

The real yogi, who has succeeded in his experiments, has developed organs which in others are as yet undeveloped, being intended to be organized and vitalized in some future epoch, organs which make it possible to explore higher molecular kinds, a whole series of ever higher stages of aggregation far beyond the possibilities of nuclear physics to ascertain.

Of these rudiments Westerners have no conception and their mighty authorities dismiss with derision and contempt the mere idea that such things could be possible. They have, to be sure, the wonderful ability to judge things of which they know nothing.

The Indian explanation of reality is itself superior to that of the West. It is a doctrine of development, of the pre-existence of the soul, of rebirth, and of karma, that is, the law of sowing and reaping. It asserts that there are other worlds than the physical and undertakes to prove this to serious and honest inquirers who are prepared to undergo its methods of developing the rudiments of higher kinds of objective consciousness existing in man. It thereby refutes the agnostic’s and the skeptic’s denial of superphysical knowledge, of existence being ruled laws, of development, etc., thereby clearing the way for esoterics.

How, then, could Westerners have any knowledge of superphysical worlds when they do not have the ability to ascertain their existence? They ascertain facts in physical matter by applying physical sense (objective physical consciousness). In order to ascertain facts in higher worlds a corresponding kind of sense is necessary, and it is that which has been given the unfortunate name of clairvoyance.

Scientists cannot be blamed for lacking emotional or mental sense. But one is justified in demanding that they should not categorically deny the existence of things concerning which they have no logical right to express opinions.

Philosophy does not teach man to think in accordance with reality. It does teach, however, that man only makes mistakes when trying to think without the necessary facts. The philosophers have not yet grasped this. Besides, they have failed to solve the most evident of all the problems of knowledge.

The true seeker, who has recognized mankind’s total disorientation and intellectual helplessness as to the problems of existence, examines everything, not caring whether the ruling authorities have dismissed it categorically or parroting public opinion ridicules and disdains, as it does everything that it does not know or cannot comprehend.

"It is but natural—even from the dead letter standpoint—to view Satan, the Serpent of Genesis, as the real creator and benefactor, the Father of Spiritual mankind. For it is he who was the 'Harbinger of Light.' Bright radiant Lucifer, who opened the eyes of the automaton created by Jehovah, as alleged; and he who was the first to whisper: 'in the day ye eat thereof ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil'—can only be regarded in the light of a Saviour. An 'adversary' to Jehovah the 'personating spirit,' he still remains in esoteric truth the ever-loving 'Messenger' (the angel), the Seraphim and Cherubim who both knew well, and loved still more, and who conferred on us spiritual, instead of physical immortality—the latter a kind of static immortality that would have transformed man into an undying 'Wandering Jew."

"The (Biblical) Fall was the result of man's knowledge, for his 'eyes were opened.' Indeed, he was taught Wisdom and the hidden knowledge by the 'Fallen Angel,' for the latter had become from that day his Manas, Mind and Self-consciousness. In each of us that golden thread of continuous life—periodically broken into active and passive cycles of sensuous existence on Earth, and super-sensuous in Devachan—is from the beginning of our appearance upon this earth. It is the Sutratma, the luminous thread of immortal impersonal monadship, on which our earthly lives or evanescent Egos are strung as so many beads—according to the beautiful expression of Vedantic philosophy.

"And now it stands proven that Satan, or the Red Fiery Dragon, the 'Lord of Phosphorus' (brimstone was a theological improvement), and Lucifer, or 'Light-Bearer,' is in us: it is our Mind—our Redeemer, our intelligent liberator and Saviour from pure animalism. Without this principle—which radiates direct from the Divine Mind—we would be surely no better than animals."

 We lie in the lap of immense intelligence, which makes us receivers of its truth and organs of its activity. When we discern justice, when we discern truth, we do nothing of ourselves, but allow a passage to its beams. If we ask whence this comes, if we seek to pry into the soul that causes, all philosophy is at fault. Its presence or its absence is all we can affirm. Every man discriminates between the voluntary acts of his mind, and his involuntary perceptions, and knows that to his involuntary perceptions a perfect faith is due. He may err in the expression of them, but he knows that these things are so, like day and night, not to be disputed. My wilful actions and acquisitions are but roving; — the idlest reverie, the faintest native emotion, command my curiosity and respect. Thoughtless people contradict as readily the statement of perceptions as of opinions, or rather much more readily; for, they do not distinguish between perception and notion. They fancy that I choose to see this or that thing. But perception is not whimsical, but fatal. If I see a trait, my children will see it after me, and in course of time, all mankind, — although it may chance that no one has seen it before me. For my perception of it is as much a fact as the sun. “ 

A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines. With consistency a great soul has simply nothing to do. He may as well concern himself with his shadow on the wall. Speak what you think now in hard words, and to-morrow speak what to-morrow thinks in hard words again, though it contradict every thing you said to-day. — 'Ah, so you shall be sure to be misunderstood.' — Is it so bad, then, to be misunderstood? Pythagoras was misunderstood, and Socrates, and Jesus, and Luther, and Copernicus, and Galileo, and Newton, and every pure and wise spirit that ever took flesh. To be great is to be misunderstood.”

As a river begins at the mouth of the glacier, it flows through different terrains. It travels through different ecosystems. And in its journey through the peaks and plateaus, the mountains and the grasslands, the fields and the jungles, it acquires things without trying to acquire them. It loses things without trying to shed them.

And when this river arrives at the vast ocean, if one were to ask it, “Oh river, I saw you when you were young. I was standing next to you as you took birth at the foot of the glacier. But there is something very different about you today. What did you do during this journey of a thousand miles?”

The river would say, “Dear sir, it is interesting that you see me differently. For I too feel different after this journey. But I cannot explain how it happened. For there was no clever methodology to my transformation. I cannot recall having done anything at all.”

Nothing in this life happens until one clears his desk.

Nothing in this life happens until one becomes ready.

For there is no “part-time” journey to success.

There is no “part-time” journey to enlightenment.

There is no “part-time” journey to superhuman performance.

And why should there be?

Why would nature reveal its magical secrets to a “part-time” human?”

It is for the uncompromising.

The same can be said about Freedom.

Every country that has ever become sovereign, has achieved its sovereignty through war.

In most cases, the war is against the oppressing nation.

In the case of Gandhi’s India, the war was with oneself.

Evil does not depart so easily.

Power is not relinquished so casually.

Man’s ultimate prize is won with an ultimate war.

Those who are serious will understand that man fights himself.

But even the serious feel proud for having come upon such a conclusion. And the intoxication of this pride has blinded them to even greater levels of understanding.

To fight oneself is common.

To intentionally wage war against oneself is as rare as the supernova.

The Ultimate Man is the one who wages war against the desire to satiate himself.

And the only way that such a man would organically come to such a decision is if he intuits that the other side of this war will give something greater than that which comes from satiating himself.

Man is not an altruist.

Nor is he a masochist.

The desire to sever the chains that bind one to his vices is rare.

The desire to sever the chains that bind one to his hopes is rarer.

For every man lives in anticipation of something.

Be it five seconds from now, or five years.

This is why, though he himself may spout it, he does not respond to silly notions such as “become present or be in the moment.”

Silly man, do you not realize that a man who lives with hope and anticipation cannot possibly be in the moment?

The Moment is far closer to the destitute than it is to the optimist.

The Moment is far closer to the heathen than it is the spiritualist.

For it is what remains, when all hope ceases.

A war against the ties that bind man to the possibilities of coming joys . . .

A war against the ties that bind man to the possibilities of getting his “due” . . .

A war against the ties that bind man to the possibilities of happy times . . .

Who could possibly wage such a war?

It is easy to wage war against one who brings man pain.

But what sort of man would wage war against one who brings him pleasure?

Mara said to Buddha something I will never forget. Just before he reached enlightenment, Mara said to him,

“Oh you who go where no man dares.”

These are words of pure truth.

Devils tend to be as keen and incisive as gods, regardless of whether they side with the light or the darkness.

Marching through the fertile soil of one’s traditional self is a wholly disingenuous act. For these are false soldiers in pursuit of an empty cause.

The trouble with man is that instead of seeking purity, he seeks happiness.

And there is nothing that binds him so tightly to illusion than this one fact.

For happiness only exists in the mud-pit of circumstance. And it is precisely the fickle nature of circumstance that compels him to seek happiness to begin with.

Our small selves cannot hear the burden of the universe; if they sincerely try, they will quickly come to long for utter forgetfulness, surcease and darkness. But their way of liberation is close to them, a liberation into the boundless One, whose heart is gladness, whose ways are peace, whose light and mirthful works are unnumbered worlds, brimful of alert and exultant life.