Reactionary Metaphysics IV - The Superiority of Orthopraxy

I’ve spent a lot of time attacking political ideology. I’ve likened it to religious dogma, which I’ve also critiqued extensively in this series. More than anything else, I believe that we need to adopt a shift in our way of thinking. Instead of conjuring ideological castles in the sky, we ought to focus on learning construction techniques, basically.

I have a thought experiment that I want to share to illustrate my point. A series of questions for you to consider:

• Did the conquistadors defeat the Aztecs and the Incas because they were Catholic or because they had guns, steel and horses?

• Did Germany lose to the USSR because Communism is superior to Nazism or because the German Army ran out of fuel?

• Did your favorite basketball team lose to their opponents because they didn’t believe in Basketballism hard enough?

The point that I’m driving at here is that best practice is the key decider of outcomes in this world. There are good and then there are better ways of doing things. Committing oneself to the discovery of best practices in all walks of life from politics, to gardening, cooking, working out and, yes, spiritualism, is the superior path.

Correct belief is only a hinderance and obstacle to correct practice.

Instead of arguing about the ideal political system, people who consider themselves politically savvy ought to learn the art of politicking. Scientists, ideally, ought to seek an impartial state of mind and commit themselves wholly to the scientific method and not to promulgating atheist dogmas. Priests ought to A/B test praying techniques and share their results with their colleagues and congregations.

This is not a new idea in any way. We still see echoes of this sort of thinking in the modern world, if only we know where to look.

Many martial arts are simply religions in disguise. In their pure state, they are simply a series of techniques that one learns to attain spiritual development. Advancement within the school is based on mastery of the practice, not on learning the correct dogma. They are results-oriented; one has to be actually be able to throw someone onto the mat, enter an altered state, conquer one’s fear and so on, not just be able to recite the core teachings like a trained parrot on command.

It is little surprise then that, upon further investigation, almost all the founders of the various martial art schools were spiritual gurus. Kung Fu was founded by a blue-eyed barbarian from Iran or northern India who taught the monks of China various techniques to better attain altered states of consciousness. These movements became the foundational 18* techniques of Kung Fu, from which all others were then derived.

The founder of Aikido wrote about an experience that he had in the mountains where, after training for awhile doing katas and sitting under waterfalls and meditating, a golden mountain spirit descended into his body and revealed secret teachings to him, which he codified in his martial art.

Judo and Jiu-Jitsu adepts who reached a certain level were said to have been subjected to an initiation rite in which certain pressure points were hit on their bodies, leading to their deaths and subsequent resuscitation. Having spent some time dwelling in death, the initiate was able to ascertain for himself that death was an illusion and only the beginning of something greater. He no longer feared death after that point.

Examples abound.

Another point of consideration is the structure of traditional societies. As we all know, there was a stratification in the social structure - castes and classes were based along professional lines. The professions that lent oneself to spiritual development were placed on a higher level of status and privilege than the others. Religious figures who spent their days practicing spiritual techniques were always near the top. So too were warriors. The reason that warriors were held in such high-regard was because the practice of war lent itself to spiritual development. The extreme focus and constant proximity to death required by the profession often led to warriors experiencing altered states when they went into battle. Their profession stimulated experiences quite similar to the near-death experience that initiates were subjected to with ritual hangings, drownings, suffocations and so on in the various mystery cults. Martial arts schools often sprung up during periods of peace to simulate the spiritual experiences that actual war naturally stimulated.

War then, was not about sadistic blood-letting, but about spiritual development. We see this idea expressed in the West as well, if not codified or systematized to the same extent as in the East. Ernst Junger’s reflections on his experience in World War I comes to mind.

Junger’s war stories should be a source of hope and encouragement for us now. The key takeaway of his lived experience was that even the brutality of modern, industrial, trench warfare could not strip the eternal, spiritual, and transcendent dimensions of war. He then took this line of thinking and applied it to other parts of industrial society, arguing that spiritual growth was still attainable, even in modernity, in other professions.

In traditional societies, as mentioned before, professions that lent themselves to attaining higher spiritual states more than others were valued higher than the professions in which this was harder to attain. In other words, entire societies were structured around the pursuit of experiential spiritual development. This is in contrast to Christendom, which came later and was structured around correct spiritual belief and ritual. This then gave way to modernity and societies structured around correct political dogma.

The war method, while brutally effective, is not the only way to experience a brush with the metaphysical.

One altered state that most people have some familiarity with is the flow state. Achieving the flow state is simply a matter of practice and it can be reached while surfing, coding, drawing, writing, or facing down an opponent intent on killing you. Time slows down and compresses when one enters it. The boundaries of one’s body disappear and one feels oneself to simply be a part of the world. One’s sense of selfness also undergoes a radical shift. One becomes the action itself, the verb in a sentence and not the subject, the movement and the mover all at once.

So long as one commits oneself to doing something, anything, that is difficult and requires extreme focus and self-control, one has a chance of being able to enter the flow state. I get it while writing, on occasion. If I have a difficult thought that I struggle to articulate, I find myself focusing intensely, all other musings pushed aside, striving to unravel the convoluted knot in my head and forcing my fingers to tap out the notes of the idea as quickly as I can before it slips out of my mental grasp again.

I’ve felt it while sparring at my boxing school. I’ve felt it while meditating. I’ve even felt it while I was at surf camp after which point I realized that I could never again look down on surf bums for their lifestyle choices ever again. They have dedicated themselves to chasing after a spiritual high that they believe they can attain once they catch the “perfect wave”. They also have great tans.

In the West, the Transcendentalists found that they could enter a similar state while experiencing nature. They sought out locations with extreme beauty in pursuit of “the Sublime” a state of altered consciousness engendered by coming into contact with extreme beauty. This practice found its way into their art, which consisted of attempting to capture the breathtaking landscapes that had led to an altered state of consciousness in the beholder on a canvas or to stimulate it in the viewer.

Brain chemistry tells us that we have different states of perception that we are capable of achieving through the application of certain methods. Most people spend their time in Beta state, a state of agitation oriented around solving a problem. This state has its uses, but because of the constant negative stimuli that surround us in modern society, people get stuck in it, and end up miserable and stressed as a result. Alpha state, in contrast, is the state that the hunter-gatherer, the warrior or the expert meditator spends his time in. One is focused on one’s surroundings, one’s opponent, or one’s body and not the thoughts running roughshod in one’s mind. Alpha lends itself to a feeling of aliveness and awareness and relaxation that Beta does not. Alpha state also has various levels of depth that one can sink into until Alpha transitions into even deeper states of consciousness such as Theta, where hypnagogic imagery begins to surface and bleed into our awareness.

Mastery of the different states of perception is the bread and butter of the practice of mysticism. One doesn’t have to believe in anything with this approach, one simply has to experience for oneself by learning and mastering the proper techniques. This can be done through the direct, committed practice of mind-alteration or, like traditional societies did, finding it as a by-product of one’s professional work.

That is the tragedy of modernity, really; not everyone can sit under a tree for hours to achieve mental mastery of various states of perception.

People are different and come from different socio-economic backgrounds. For most people, spiritual development is only possible through the practice of their profession and an artisan honing his craft in his workshop has a better chance of experiencing altered states than an assembly-line worker, for example. Many forms of work used to be considered holy for this very reason and skilled work was incorporated into many monastic orders, as an example.

Ideally, we could return to a society that valued and structured itself around the principle of spiritual growth, instead of widget production or the promulgation of one political/religious dogma by force. Societies that valued best practice in all things and were not chained to the ever-changing demands of proper belief. Life was possessed with a kind of spiritual vitality, whereas now, we are surrounded by a materialistic sterility.

Furthermore, people are completely ignorant of what spirituality is, or rather, what it could be. They either dismiss it entirely, or commit to the superstitious mumblings of the various cults that have cropped up everywhere, or they outsource their spirituality to the priest-orientated established religions of the world.

Few seem aware that there exists a path to attaining self-mastery that is free of superstition and dogma. A difficult path based entirely on developing the correct best methods and practices and brushing aside everything that is unnecessary or that hinders one’s development.

Like I’ve written before, our understanding of spiritual matters affects our understanding of material matters. But now, I want to postulate that the opposite order of casualty might be true as well. In other words, if we can break through the grip that orthodox belief has on our minds in politics and science, perhaps we could learn to apply this new attitude to our approach to spirituality. Or, conversely, if we apply orthopraxy to our spiritual lives, perhaps we could then be able to see past and overcome the various secular dogmas that are strangling our society.

Hopefully, this last post will disabuse you of the idea that you have signed up to a newsletter dedicated to meticulously chronicling the comings and goings in Eastern Europe. Russia and the war are simply a useful template to get ideas across in the same way that the Alchemists used chemistry terminology or the way sci-fi writers pretend to be writing about distant galaxies and alien races when in reality they are promulgating new religions on Earth.

Point being: the only true religion of the wise man is the cult of the best practice.

Consider: every single religion incorporates some form of prayer. All practitioners of prayer claim that the technique works for them and improves their lives. This indicates that the secret lies in the technique itself and not in the dogma of the particular god, demon or holy man that the faithful believe in.

In all other walks of life, belief plays little to no role in, say, making a perfect cup of tea, a mahogany desk, learning to play the violin. There is only the technique and the pursuit of its mastery. Why should it be any different for politics or spirituality?