I have been friends with the phenomenologist James Hart since 2016, when I first discovered his 1972 dissertation Hedwig Conrad-Martius’ Ontological Phenomenology (which has since been republished in book form: Hedwig Conrad-Martius’ Ontological Phenomenology). During the pandemic, with the Society for the Phenomenology of Religious Experience (SoPheRE), I ran a webinar reading group on that work (that can be found on YouTube, and on my Media page), which Hart attended and often led, and so did the book’s editor Rodney Parker. Conrad-Martius’ philosophy is deeply mystical, thought this is not necessarily apparent to the untrained eye.
This mystical aspect at the secret core of philosophy, expressed more by certain philosophers than others, is what Martin W. Ball calls the “radical non-dual” experience, which can be achieved in many ways but premier amongst them is 5MeO/ Bufo.
Now Hart often recommended to me a few other lesser-known philosophers he focuses upon: Antonio Rosmini (1797-1855), Louis Lavelle (1883-1951), Michele Sciacca (1908-1975), and Vladimir Jankélevitch (1903-1985). I have dipped into Jankélevitch, in the intervening years, but nothing yet swayed me from my focus on Conrad-Martius–which is also an important part of the topic of my dissertation. I would add to this list Jean Nabert and many others too… such as Arnaud Dandieu, who Christian Roy recently told me about at SPEP in Rochester (last month).
Bufo/ 5MeO grants the final revelation of complete and perfect enlightenment in the super-fact that I am God. Now, since then I’ve focused on integration of all that I know and all that I do in philosophy with the divine knowledge of Godself and the God-realm (the infinite dimension of my own divine imagination and divine intelligence, as well as my physical being and life and absolutely everything else that I can). What can I recommend as the key thing for other philosophers to focus upon in integration?
The Bufo/ 5MeO divine knowledge (*Is it an “experience?” A “peak experience?” A moment? Or is it everything?) brings me to what can be described in such terms as infinite freedom and love beyond love, bliss beyond bliss and so on, but there is an Act at its center. It has re-confirmed for me the philosophical architecture of the infinite sphere and infinite center that I have already found pre-Bufo, but because that unique alchemical agent is so direct and immediate, so much can be translated between my philosopher-self (Randy) and Godself. I have found that there is indeed an alchemical “Great Work” or “Work of Ages” type of things going on, and that is the divine drama that can be expressed in real-mythological terms as Deicision–the Dramaturgical “Death” of God–that is, as the One and Only Absolute Act, the Pure Act of Distinction and Decision. This is clearly the First Distinction of Spencer-Brown’s 1969 Laws of Form that was also a God Revelation under the agency and influence of Spncer-Brown and John C. Lilly’s 1960s LSD mind expansion. But the 5MeO device affords more of this high translation-work, so I can remember important aspects of this primordial drama.
Louis Lavelle (1883-1951)
This bring us to Louis Lavelle. Check out his basic details at his Wikipedia here.
A glance at Lavelle’s work at the Association Louis Lavelle here and the English translations of Robert Jones here. I’m currently reading Jones’ translation of Of the Act.
I called Jim Hart a couple days ago and he reminded me that he and Jeremy Smith have their own translation of Lavelle’s Total Presence, and they’re looking for a publisher. Given that Lavelle’s philosophy of the Absolute Act is, in my perception, in perfect agreement with Spencer-Brown’s formal ontological paradigm that centers upon the “First Distinction,” I suggested that Total Presence would be most welcomed in the book series I edit, Marked States: Series on Form, published by College Publications, with the Spencer-Brown Society. More news on that front soon, I hope!
Bufo/ 5MeO plus a ready participation equals God: Revelation, Enlightenment: The Absolute Infinite Ultimate Reality. That is all there really, truly, is. In its unobscured formlessness this ultimate reality is simple and obvious, super-obvious, over-familiar, and the only “mind” that “thinks” about it appear from the human mortal side to be a super-cosmic theological implosion of anamnesis that can only be expressed as properly eschatological and described as absolutely beyond everything.
Now, the “ready participants” come from many different walks of life. Not everone is a philosopher, even if everyone becomes God. But when a professional metaphysical philosopher whose life mission has been to integrate the experience of Godself that has been more or less identified as “mystical experience” and the like, the Bufo/ 5MeO completion-of-the-work becomes the lapis philosophorum, and the “integration” work, or re-entry into mortal human life / family life / professional life, becomes PHILOSOPHY-AS-INTEGRATION and the self-generation of INTEGRAL PHILOSOPHY. This is ancient and perennial wisdom, and now it is seen to emerge from oneself.
Louis Lavelle is a philosopher whose work I am only just now delving into. In Of the Act, we learn that his philosophy is a felicitous adherence to the traditional philosophy of the “actus purus,” belonging first of all to Aquinas and Aristotle (the philosophy tied to entelechy, and to the analogia entis, etc.), but I would add that adherence to such a mystical first principle becomes a spade or dibble for divining from within THE ONLY ONESELF the truth and reality forever sought by every form of philosophy expressed under the sun (“Sub Sole” here means = pre-Bufo/ 5MeO).
Page One of Jones’ Of the Act describes this “primitive act” as the secret performance of the philosopher who “mounts back to the very springboard of everything-that-is,” and that “all springs have a mysterious and sacred character,” starting from the “sole foothold in presence,” …and this “more secret activity” (than any kind of movement!) is the resumption of endless being. This is page two. Page two! Anyway, this wonderous concord with the God-“experience” and its moment or center-point of ALL CREATION (AND “DESTRUCTION”)/ ALPHA AND OMEGA/ THE WAY/ THE LIGHT/ THE WHOLE etc., is striking–absolutely striking!–in Lavelle’s philosophy.
Lavelle goes on to describe this act as “an infinitely more positive experience” of “my active presence to myself” and “my feeling of responsibility to myself and my world,” all stemming from the real reality that all things take place in the present. This is not only the “radically nondual” perspective, the metspherical perspective, and so on, but also the axiological dimension of the deepest revelation in the context of religious and mystical experience, and also that feeling of responsibility that emerges with the toad medicine.
Everything hinges upon this “heart and secret of creation” (page 4) of the ETERNAL ACT, this “decision” and “release “which ever remains an incomprehensible mystery” (page 5).
There is so much here that will resonate with the 5MeO/ Bufo/ toad medicine community. “All joy of possession is joy in its achievement… once unity is satisfied and all our needs are met, we can still ask ‘What remains for us? Only to die?'”
This is all I can muster at this time, but there is so much more here–I have more pages read and marked-up (that’s my precess for careful reading), but I gotta go! Check it out!
randolphdible.com 