Nightmare

Introductory article to Issue XXIX that will be released Sept. 1st, 2023. Pre-order here.

Wasting my time serving my mind
For sense pleasures I can find
Gotta get back, back to the truth
You know it was left behind

It’s so easy to see, if you wanna be free
Don’t wanna be just a slave
‘Cause no matter how you choose
You know you’ll lose
If you ain’t looking for the truth

Cro-Mags, Seekers of the Truth

In Greek myths, the personification of sleep is the god Hypnos who lived in Hades near the river of Lethe (forgetfulness) with his brother Thanatos (death). In many stories he is kind, gentle, and calm, however he possesses those human lives whom he lulls to sleep. From this god’s name we get the word hypnosis, for myths involving him reveal that it is the hypnotist that gains possession and control over the one he puts to sleep and it is modern life carries on in a buzzing hypnotic drone, sucking souls into deep sleep and feverish nightmare. This nightmare is of the most haunting kind; characterized by a general malaise—an uneasiness without detectable root or point of generation. The shell of the body walks about animated by daily injection of the zeitgeist, while the soul slumbers in captive and terrific horror for its lack of locus and purpose for existence. The radiation of the screen, the smoke of the dope, and the hypnotic lure of digitized life, all make the mind mailable in the hands of passivity  pulsing with the general compromise of our age. We experience a totalitarian onslaught of flatteries, ideologies, comfortabilities, etc. These attacks come under the guise of safety, self-preservation, self-assertive knowledge, puffing of the will, and other children of vainglory. They are pumped from the mainframe into the air to suffocate the soul in deep spiritual sleep, for to fall asleep under the world’s hypnosis is to be possessed by it and to dwell in forgetfulness and death. One who is lured into this deathlike sleep is one who has been bitten by the bitter poison of this world and sin, “for he both exhales noisome odors like the dead, and is inactive like one that is asleep, and like him he sees nothing, but is dreaming, and forming fancies and illusions,” says Saint John Chrysostom.

The virtual omniscience in a world oversaturated by data and the denial of self-deception, allows the body to move in zombified existence without thought of waking or stirring that inner man that has been lulled to sleep. However, when the plug on the wireless network is pulled on this intoxicating illusion and the soul begins to speak in its sleep, the horrors of the nightmare cannot be ignored. Perhaps the moans of the inner-self can be deafened by the constant stupor of extravagance but they will never be silenced, and when the ear begins to hear those terrified screams from the self-induced fever-dream it cannot help but imprint true reality on the mind. That reality is that we are lost in the lie of self-sufficiency, without wisdom in a world of knowledge, and lacking all purpose in a new age of supposed opportunity and evolution. A human race on the cusp of advancement yet on the brink of spiritual extinction. A people that are obsessed with spending billions to send rockets to the world above or paying millions to submerse ourselves into the world below, yet entirely ignorant of the world within.

However, we are not created to be sleepers, but to abandon our self-made illusions and be a people who rouse the soul. Man was made for transcendence, not to revel in the mud of a sublunary existence. This is why the soul cries out of from underneath the possession of its hypnotic tyrant. It is calling from its sleep and terrifying you for something more than the materialistic plasticity that has made you an artificial being with an elusive existence. The beginning of wakefulness, to rub off the dust of the sandman, is to embrace the nightmare that the soul is living. It is only in recognition of our own wretched, hypnotized, and possessed state that one awakes to the reality that he is overtaken and caged. It is recognizing that the world, which craves to be our master, has only given us empty promises, darkness, and deceit. It urges us to consume, conform, live for pleasure, dull the mind, make fat the body, and stay asleep. To fill ourselves with knowledge and data, but remain unwise and unaware of the seriousness our condition and captivity. We are even tricked to believing that we are self-sufficient, autonomous, and know what is best for ourselves. However, we see the world pump out medicine after medicine and program after program to secure the blindfold of our spiritual problem even tighter with belief in “the universe,” “self-happiness,” and other impersonal gods that make no demands on the soul. All this, of course, distracts from the reality of our state of illusion and unreality. A great ascetic of the fourth century, Saint Basil the Great, wrote of our plight, saying “we are without understanding, we do not scrutinize our own structure; we are ignorant of what we are and why we are. For we are settled in the greatest indifference to ourselves, not possessing things within reach of our knowledge, a knowledge of the smallest aspects of what is in us.” The concerted effort of the world has been to ignore an inner state that is being corrupted and to put all focus on the nightmarish dreamworld we have created thinking that each bandaid (a new president, economic structure, social policy, etc.) will be the solution to the tyranny we face. However, the recognition of our true inner state and heeding to the terror cries of the sleeping soul brings forth a thirst for light and the ability to shake off the hypnosis that captivates us.

If we look within, we see a vast world that has been purposely ignored. The same ascetic above wrote, “Do not despise the wonder that is in you. For you are small in your own reckoning, but the Word will disclose that you are very great. Because of this wise David, seeing himself exactly, says ‘Wonderful is your knowledge from me’(Ps 138:6), I have discovered wonder in knowledge concerning you… From this small work of construction, I understand the great Fashioner.” Within each person is a cosmos, a reflection or an icon of the entire creation itself and its Fashioner. Mankind was not created for nightmares, feverish sleep, and hypnotic captivity. However, the terror of our hypnosis is that we have come to believe that how we live in this nightmare is who we are or created to be, but “To do evil is to depart from the good way, to contradict one’s true intention, one’s nature, one’s purpose, one’s origin, one’s goal, one’s definition, one’s will, and finally one’s very essence,” says Saint Dionysios. And as the great sufferer for truth, Saint Maximus, states, “Evil is not found in the essence of creatures, but in their false and irrational movement. One could say that evil is nothing but the failure to direct to their end the faculties placed in human nature. What is more, evil is an irrational movement of the natural faculties, leading them according to an erroneous judgment to something other than their true end. I understand by “end” the Author of all creation towards whom all beings strive in virtue of their very nature.” That is, we have taken the nature we were created with, a nature that is created for transfiguration and inclined towards virtue, and have perverted it towards self-pleasure. We have taken the spiritual powers and directed them from an inner life to a life of pleasure. We have lived in rebellion to our very essence and have traded spiritual rationality for sensuality. This sensuality truly carries out the characteristics of Hypnos, for it comes to us kind, gentle, and seemingly compassionate but lures us to forgetfulness of our purpose and causes the soul to dwell with death while the body lives and plays in hypnotic dance. This causes man to lead “life in opposition to reason, enslaved to sensations in opposition to his dignity… and for having lost the natural activity of his intellect, he is likened unto beings without reason by his behavior, for reason is dead in him, and the least rational part of the soul has borne it away through his behavior,” says Saint Niketas Stethatos. That is, when sensations are traded for spiritual dignity, we become like brute beasts without reason and live in opposition to ourselves resulting in so many spiritual ills we see today. Since pleasure and sensuality reigns supreme, spiritual death reigns our existence, for “Deceived at the beginning by the illusion of pleasure, we preferred death to life… for pleasure is the mother of death,” says Saint Maximus. The Saint continues, “the sorrow of the soul is the end of pleasure of the senses. For the soul’s sorrow is elicited by this pleasure.” The reason that this sorrow captivates and haunts a man given to pleasure is because the passions can never fulfill the heart’s capacity for desire, for the human heart was created in function of Christ, as a large box, vast enough to contain God himself, says St Nicholas Cabasilas. So, following the ancient devices of rebellion against this hypnotic world and the heart’s sorrow, the soul must be awakened through the casting off of sensual worldly pleasure that has become its tyrant.

However, without the help of the Knower of Hearts, and the Caller of Souls, we will continue to flail in a dreamworld. For one who is in a trance, seduced under a spell, or stuck in a nightmare has need of a Savior to wake and alert him. The Apostle writes to the Romans, “While we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly. Why, one will hardly die for a righteous man—though perhaps for a good man one will dare even to die. But God shows his love for us in that while we were yet sinners Christ died for us.” That is, in our captivity to hypnosis and death, blood was shed for our freedom from our nightmare. A New Man—the God Man—entered into our depravity, into the most horrifying aspects our nightmare has to offer in order to rouse souls from sleep and lift them back to the reality of spiritual dignity. It is with the might of this war-victory that men and women throughout the ages have reaped freedom through its spoils. For Christ, “did bind the strong man [the devil], and spoiled his goods, and abolished death, vivifying [mankind] who had been in a state of death,” says Saint Irenaeus. He continues, “wherefore he [the devil] who had led man captive, was justly captured in his turn by God; but man, who had been led captive, was loosed from the bonds of condemnation.”  For, it is in Christ that the captors of the soul are put off, fought, loosed, and bound. The complete and perfect God-man can only give the incomplete and imperfect soul the means to be completed and perfected. This is attested to throughout the ages, as Justin Popovic, a great Serbian Saint of recent times observed:

“[…]Who is a complete and perfect human being?

Perhaps Plato? But he, precisely due to his deep knowledge of his own imperfections and shortcomings, was transformed into an arrow of thirst for the worlds above, the world of the eternal ideas and ideals. This means that he is not a perfect and complete man.

Perhaps Buddha is perfect? But Buddha being persecuted by monstrous and pitiless feelings of human imperfection, transferred all of his desires for the perfection of the human being to the world beyond—to a world of apathy and insensibility, that is, to Nirvana. Therefore, neither is he the perfect and complete man.

Perhaps Moses? Yet even Moses, persecuted by the horrible calamities of his people and of his own personal weakness, continued to seek help from heaven. Indeed, the bitterness of his humanity is sweetened with prophetic visions about the future coming of the Messiah and Savior. This means that he also is not a perfect and complete men.

Perhaps Mohammed? But Mohammed, being tortured by his bloodthirsty Hades and by his sensual paradise, runs along this planet realizing through fire and iron his prophetic dreams, trampling with fanatic enthusiasm on the corpses on “infidels.” Therefore, neither is he the perfect and complete man.

Perhaps Kant? But Kant, also tortured with the imperfection and the incompleteness of the human being, transferred whatever is human from the narrow confines of rationalistic decision making and placed it in the abyss of the meta-rationalistic “Das Ding and Sich,” leaving himself at the mercy of the unforeseen, of the unknown, and of the dreadful. Therefore, neither is he a perfect and complete man.

Perhaps Shakespeare? He, however, in his insatiable thirst for the perfect and complete, lived a most imperfect and incomplete life of unbearable tragedy. He guided man to the worlds above, yet left him along the road amazed and astonished. Consequently, neither is he a perfect and complete man.

Perhaps Goethe? Living however, the drama of the human being in all the breadth and depth in with Mephistopheles place the primary role, Gothe, by his pre-death cry, “Licht mehr Licht,” clearly had shown how unfortunate was his departure from this world to the world beyond. Therefore, neither was that one a perfect and complete man.

Perhaps Tolstoy? Yet in his continuous and unyielding struggle with imperfection and incompleteness he arrived at such a spiritual restlessness that a short while before his death, in an unbearable agony of the soul, he escaped from his house, with the purpose of escaping from himself, from sorrowful imperfection and his tragically incomplete being. Therefore, neither is he a perfect and complete man.

Perhaps Nietzsche? But, through the volcanic feeling of tragic imperfection and of the unbearable incompleteness of the human being in all the dimensions and realities of this world, as well as through his unbridled longer for the higher and more perfect man, Nietzsche became insane! Thereofore, neither is Nietzsche a perfect and complete man.

And so on unto the last man: one sorrowful parade of imperfect and incomplete men. Yet in the middle of them stands That One who had the fullness of mystery, the wondrous God-man: in a divine way perfect and humanly real. His human goodness is divinely perfect and complete; so is His righteousness, and His mercy, and His compassion, and His immortality, and His eternity and His beauty: all are humanly real but also divinely perfect and complete. Nothing is miraculous because He has transformed all things human to divine; He has completed and perfected everything by the divine. In one word, the whole man in Him is divinely perfected and divinely completed.”

Let us, therefore, O sleeper, awake from the nightmare and turn to Him Who delivers the soul from captivity and death.