Marx Meets The Pauline School

For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places.

~ Ephesians 6:12

Transgressive Transcendentalism accepts the found world as a complex web of social relations through which various forms of power (some more benign than others) are exercised.

Its dialectic consists in appropriation-of and resistance-to the existing configurations of power--including Narrative Power (the power to control "the Narrative"). The goal of practicing this dialectic is the subversion of Locative relations of Power (the Imperium) for the sake of Utopian relations (liberty, fraternity, equality).

The philosophers have only interpreted the world in various ways; the point, however, is to change it.

~ Karl Marx, Theses On Feuerbach, XI.

Full-Fledged Humanism

Marx was not an academic writer but a humanist in the Renaissance sense of the term: his mind was concerned with the totality of human affairs, and his vision of social liberation embraced, as an interdependent whole, all the major problems with which humanity is faced.

~ Leszek Kolakowski, Main Currents of Marxism, 8.

Spiritual Poverty

Spiritual poverty (faqr) is to withdraw your hand from the world and keep your heart from showing complaints. The marks of a true faqir are three: he conceals his poverty, guards the secret [that exists between him and God], and maintains his religion.

~ Ahmad ibn 'Ajiba (d. 1809), The Book of Ascension, no. 39.

The Real Gist Of Gnosis

The real gist of gnosis is to recognize that to God is the kingdom. When a man knows that all possessions are in the absolute control of God, what further business has he with mankind, that he should be veiled from God by them or by himself? All such veils are the result of ignorance. As soon as ignorance is annihilated, they vanish, and this life is made equal in rank to the life hereafter.

~ Al-Hujwiri, Kashf al-Mahjub, "On The Gnosis of God" (Tr. Nicholson).

The Vital Ten Percent

It may be said that the religious impulse is ninety per cent wishful thinking. Wishful thinking is, indeed, rooted deeply in us. Unlike other animals, human beings live by their illusions: our very words, it has been said, point to what is in fact not there. Human beings alone are artists. Over and beyond the immediate stimulus and response, we want every moment to make sense in some larger whole which our lives form: people cannot stand living with sheer absurdity. If we refuse to make a conscious choice of what sense to make of life, we are told, we will in practice adopt some pattern of sense unconsciously and without consideration. Hence even intelligent people may persuade themselves to believe almost anything that seems to make hopeful sense of life. And since life is largely a tissue of miseries, we are under pressure to discover some sense which will give the misery a positive meaning...The component of sheer wishful thinking in religion is large, but is still not the whole of it. What is most interesting about religion is not the wishful thinking as such, but the creative insights that come along with it, which open new possibilities of human meaningfulness and expression.

~ Marshall G. S. Hodgson, The Venture of Islam, vol. 1, 158-159.

If, as Hodgson asserted, the religious impulse is ninety per cent wishful thinking, what makes up the remaining ten per cent? He implies the remainder is composed of creative insights that accompany the main body of "wishful thought."

Of what do such insights consist?



If one is a dervish, those insights emerge from the critical faculty. Once activated, that faculty begins to slowly chip away at the ninety per cent. This is the foundational task of dervishood. The goal is fana' or the annihilation of that part of the consciousness responsible for generating the illusions of wishful thinking in the first place (the so-called "ego-self"). The hallmark of fana' is, therefore, disillusionment.

There is an ecstasy that often accompanies disillusionment, and many who enter upon the dervish path live for such experiences. Ecstasy, however, is not the goal of fana', it is an emotional by-product. It should be enjoyed, but not fetishized. And when this mood passes--as it must--the mood of sobriety that takes its place leaves one "calm of mind, all passion spent." (Milton, Samson Agonistes).

A tranquil state of calm resolve (baqa') then characterizes the dervish's comportment. And it is with such resolve that the dervish dons the mantle of disillusionment (khirqa, lit., "rag") and re-enters the crowded tavern of ruin to play her song for any who possess the ears to hear.

Muhammad: A Revolutionary Life

Muhammad's attitude was therefore implicitly a revolutionary one. The mystic stood in direct relation to the Being of Beings, who showed himself to him and spoke to him. His own, individual experience had an absolute value which to him was not in doubt and which had nothing to do with the rules governing social life, even if these were only an extension of some previous revelation of the same kind. Like the rational theorist who sees no flaw in his reasoning, he could not feel bound by the blind force of habit, even if disguised by secondary and transparent rationalizations. In the same way, Leszek Kolakowski has described mysticism as the revolt of the individual conscience against the system, the "apparatus."

~ Maxime Rodinson, Muhammad, 82.

Dialectical vs. Vulgar Materialism

Dialectical materialism is distinguishable from vulgar materialism in that the former accounts for "spirit" while the latter does not.

Dialectical materialism is compatible, therefore, with an earthy transcendentalism: Transgressive Transcendentalism. A transcendentalism that eschews idealism and metaphysics insofar as they are modes of escapism.

Dialectical materialism accounts for life in its fecundity and burgeoning fruitfulness. It affirms life in its abundance.

Dialectical Materialism

Conditions are changing all the time, and to adapt one's thinking to the new conditions, one must study. ~ Mao Tsetung

Re-Reading The World

Re-reading the world through the eyes of the anti-imperialist dialectical materialist Mao Tsetung in pari materia with the dialectical immaterialist Arthur Schopenhauer--this, too, is Transgressive Transcendentalism.

The History Of Mankind

Mao Tsetung and W.E.B. DuBois

Mao Tsetung argued that "The history of mankind is one of continuous development from the realm of necessity to the realm of freedom. This process is never-ending. In any society in which classes exist class struggle will never end. In classless society the struggle between the new and the old and between truth and falsehood will never end...Therefore, [hu]man[kind] has constantly to sum up experience and go on discovering, inventing, creating and advancing."

While I am skeptical of Mao's Marxist teleology, his notion of jihad (struggle) could not be more on point.

"Ideas of stagnation, pessimism, inertia and complacency are all wrong," he said. "They are wrong because they agree neither with the historical facts of social development over the past million years, nor with the historical facts of nature so far known to us (i.e., nature as revealed in the history of celestial bodies, the earth, life, and other natural phenomena)."

Leonard Cohen's Prince Of Asturias Speech

Rest in peace.

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