Agape and Bhakti with Bataille and Mark at Loyola and St. Francis: The Mysticism of Reconciliation

By David L. Goicoechea

David L. Goicoechea presents his fourth volume in a series on agape. The book focuses on the complementarity of agape (Christian love) and bhakti (Hindu love). First, he shows how the Jesuit Spirituality at Loyola in Chicago and the Franciscan Spirituality at St. Francis in Joliet, Illinois, helped him to appreciate mystical love. Secondly, he shows how agape with all nine of its characteristics is central to the Gospel of Mark. Then, especially with the help of the work of Dr. Raj Singh, he shows how bhakti developed throughout the history of India. Finally, Goicoechea shows how Georges Bataille, especially with the help of St. John of the Cross, looks deeply into the Inner Experience of the Mystical Ways.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Pickwick Publications
• Release date: Oct 10, 2016
• ISBN: 9781532600630

David L. Goicoechea

David L. Goicoechea is Professor Emeritus of Philosophy at Brock University, St. Catharines, Ontario. He has published widely in the areas of philosophy of love, existentialism, philosophy of religion, postmodernism, and the history of philosophy.

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VOLUME FOUR

Agape and Bhakti with Bataille and Mark at Loyola and St. Francis

The Mysticism of Reconciliation

David L. Goicoechea

Postmodern Ethics Series 9

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Agape and Bhakti with Bataille and Mark at Loyola and St. Francis

The Mysticism of Reconciliation

Postmodern Ethics 9

Copyright ©

2016

David L. Goicoechea. All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in critical publications or reviews, no part of this book may be reproduced in any manner without prior written permission from the publisher. Write: Permissions, Wipf and Stock Publishers,

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Pickwick Publications

An Imprint of Wipf and Stock Publishers

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paperback isbn: 978-1-5326-0062-3

hardcover isbn: 978-1-5326-0064-7

ebook isbn: 978-1-5326-0063-0

Cataloguing-in-Publication data:

Names: Goicoechea, David L.

Title: Agape and Bhakti with Bataille and Mark at Loyola and St. Francis : The Mysticism of Reconciliation / David L. Goicoechea.

Description: Eugene, OR: Pickwick Publications,

2016

| Series: Postmodern Ethics 9 | Includes bibliographical references.

Identifiers:

isbn 9781532600623 (

paperback

) | isbn 9781532600647 (

hardcover

) | isbn 9781532600630 (

ebook

)

Subjects: LSCH: Bhakti. | Hinduism. | Bataille, Georges, 1897–1962. | Bible. Mark—Criticism, interpretation, etc.

Classification:

BL1214.32.B53 G55 2016 (print) | BL1214.32.B53 (ebook)

Manufactured in the U.S.A.

10/26/16

Table of Contents

Title Page

Acknowledgments

Detailed Line of Argument

Part One: The Love of Wisdom

In Jesuit Spirituality

In Mark’s Gospel

In The Gita’s Bhakti

In Bataille’s Inner Experience

Part Two: The Wisdom of Love

In Franciscan Spirituality

And Mark’s Agapetos

And The Tamil Culture

And The Sacred’s Secret

Part Three: To The Things Themselves

In Phenomenolgy

And Mark’s Reconciliation

And Beyond The Caste System

Which Science Cannot Know

Bibliography

Postmodern Ethics Series

Postmodernism and deconstruction are usually associated with a destruction of ethical values. The volumes in the Postmodern Ethics series demonstrate that such views are mistaken because they ignore the religious element that is at the heart of existential-postmodern philosophy. This series aims to provide a space for thinking about questions of ethics in our times. When many voices are speaking together from unlimited perspectives within the postmodern labyrinth, what sort of ethics can there be for those who believe there is a way through the dark night of technology and nihilism beyond exclusively humanistic offerings? The series invites any careful exploration of the postmodern and the ethical.

Series Editors:

Marko Zlomislić (Conestoga College)

David Goicoechea (Brock University)

Other Volumes in the Series:

Cross and Khôra: Deconstruction and Christianity in the Work of John D. Caputo edited by Neal DeRoo and Marko Zlomislić

Agape and Personhood with Kierkegaard, Mother, and Paul (A Logic of Reconciliation from the Shamans to Today) by David Goicoechea

The Poverty of Radical Orthodoxy edited by Lisa Isherwood and Marko Zlomislić

Theologies of Liberation in Palestine: Contextual, Indigenous and Postcolonial Perspectives edited by Nur Masalha and Lisa Isherwood

Agape and the Four Loves with Nietszche, Father, and Q (A Physiology of Reconciliation from the Greeks to Today) by David Goicoechea

Fundamentalism and Gender: Scripture—Body—Community edited by Ulrike Auga, Christina von Braun, Claudia Bruns, and Jana Husmann

Agape and Hesed-Ahava with Levinas-Derrida and Matthew at Mt. Angel and St. Thomas (A Doxology of Reconciliation)

Future Volumes:

Within the Postmodern Ethics Series, David Goicoechea is producing "Millennial Meditations on 2000 Years of Christian Love: A Postmodern Summa—Agape as Reconciliation," of which the present volume is the fourth of nine.

V Agape and Karuna with Foucault and Luke, at Brock Philosophy Department (A Therapeutology of Reconciliation based on Buddhist No-Self from Buddha to Francis)

VI Agape and Rahim with Deleuze, Brock Philosophy Society, and John (An Atheology of Reconciliation based on Islamic Sharia from Muhammad to Luther)

VII Agape and Zen with Kristeva, Wilhelmina, and Catholic School (A Semiology of Reconciliation based on Japanese No-Drama from Nishida to John XXIII)

VIII Agape and Jen with Cixous, Carolyn, and Pauline School (A Phenomenology of Reconciliation based on the Confucianist Family from Tu Wei-Ming to John Paul II)

IX Agape and Tao with Irigaray, Johanna, and the Johannine School (An Eschatology of Reconciliation based on Taoist Gendering from Moeller to Benedict XVI)

Acknowledgments

In getting out this fourth volume I once again owe a debt of gratitude to my wife, Dr. Johanna M. Tito, for helping me in innumerable ways.

Detailed Line of Argument

Part One: The Love of Wisdom

I In Jesuit Spirituality

I,1 From Benedictines and Sulpicians to Jesuits and Franciscans

I,1.1 Leaving the Seminary Fifty Years Ago

I,1.2 Why I Must Tell the Story of the Leaving in Detail

I,1.3 For It Had to Do with a Sublimated Eros

I,1.4 Which Platonically can Contribute to Agape

I,1.5 And which Makes the Love of Wisdom so Intriguing

I,1.6 So that I was Inspired to Learn from the Jesuits

I.1.7 And to Teach with the Franciscan Sisters

I,1.8 And to learn Franciscan Spirituality from Them

I,1.9 While being Loved by So Many Female Students

I,2 The Seminarian Meets a Young Lady

I,2.1 Anxiety

I,2.2 Security

I,2.3 Enchantment

I,2.4 Awe

I,2.5 Guilt

I,2.6 Joy

I,2.7 Sorrow

I,2.8 Glory

I,2.9 Out of Boredom

I,3 And Discovers the Sublimation of Celibacy

I,3.1 Apprehension

I,3.2 Generosity

I,3.3 Ambiguity

I,3.4 Eros

I,3.5 Innocence

I.3.6 Presence

I,3.7 Humility

I,3.8 Reverence

I,3.9 Gentleness

II In Mark’s Gospel

II.1 The Father’s Beloved Son Loves Altruistically

II.1.1 And He is Called the Agapetos

II.1.2 And John the Baptist is Not Worthy of this Jesus

II.1.3 Jesus Preaches Love and is Delivered for Love

II.1.4 The Structure of Mark’s Altruistic Gospel

II.1.5 Jesus’ Altruistic Agape in the First Major Section

II.1.6 The Authority of the Agapetos is Heard in his Words.

II.1.7 The Authority of the Agapetos is Seen in his Deeds

II.1.8 The Unclean Spirit Recognizes His Authority

II.1.9 The Agapetos has Authority to Forgive Sins.

II.2 The Agapetos Reveals the Abba Father’s Unconditional Love

II.2.1 The Agape that he Preaches and Practices is for All

II.2.2 For Even Sinners are the Beloved Father’s Children

II.2.3 And Jesus has Compassion for All the Oppressed

II.2.4 The Disciples of the Agapetos Do Not Now Fast

II.2.5 Because You Do Not Patch an Old Love with a New Love

II.2.6 And You Do Not Put New Love in Old Wine Skins

II.2.7 The Messiah and the Son of Man were Old Figures

II.2.8 But the Agapetos as Son of God is New

II.2.9 And This is the Messianic Secret

II.3 The Agapetos Reveals the Abba Father’s Missionary Love

II.3.1 He Appoints the Twelve to Proclaim His Message

II.3.2 All Can be His Mother, Brother and Sister

II.3.3 He Teaches His Company the Secret of the Kingdom of God

II.3.4 But He Teaches this to the Crowds in Parables

II.3.5 His Disciples Must Not Keep the Secret

II.3.6 But as Missionaries They Must Share It with All

II.3.7 Even though They will be Rejected as He is Rejected

II.3.8 For the Secret is that Agape Suffers for Others

II.3.9 And This is the Messianic Secret

III In the Gita’s Bhakti

III.1 Bhakhti and the Great Tradition of Hindu Mysticism

III.1.1 Hindu Mysticism—A Blessing for All of Humankind

III.1.2 Bhakti Love is at the Center of the Bhagavad Gita

III.1.3 A Summary of the Gita Brings Us First to the Vedanta

III.1.4 And Then to the Way of Bhakti as it Relates to Wisdom

III.1.5 And to Our Character Traits Rooted in Matter

III.1.6 Which Shows Us How Freedom is Possible

III.1.7 Is Bhakti Really at the Center of the Gita’s Teaching?

III.1.8 How do Ethics and Religion Relate in the Gita?

III.1.9 Be Free from the Flesh to be Free for Bhakti

III.2 A Study of the Bhakti Verses of the Gita

III.2.1 The Four Bhakti Verses in Chapters 4 and 6

III.2.2 There are Four Levels of Bhakti between God and Man

III.2.3 The Highest Kind of Bhakti Lets Us Die into Eternal Life

III.2.4 For My Worshipers Come to Me

III.2.5 Even if They are Men of Evil Conduct

III.2.6 Love Me because I am the Source and End of All

III.2.7 Loving Bhakti for the Terrible One of the Vision

III.2.8 Chapter 12 is the Bhakti Yoga Chapter

III.2.9 And it Stresses the Equanimity of the Lover

III.3 God’s Bhakti and our Salvation

III.3.1 By Being United with Him in Unswerving Devotion

III.3.2 Which Depends on Constancy in Knowledge of the Self

III.3.3 We are fit to Become the Abode of Brahman

III.3.4 By Worshipping the Highest Spirit with Bhakti

III.3.5 Chapters 16 and 17 Do Not Mention Bhakti

III.3.6 True Love Depends on Freedom from the three Gunas

III.3.7 Which Influence Thirteen Aspects of Our Lives

III.3.8 And Prepare Us for Equanimity

III.3.9 Beyond Liberation to a Loving Salvation

IV In Bataille’s Inner Experience

IV.I Altruistic Love and Bataillean Sex

(From Kierkegaard to Bataille)

The Community and its Secrets of Alterity

Marks Gospel and its Messianic Secret

The Bhagavad Gita and the Secrets of its Transpersonal and Personal Mysticism

IV.1.1 Bataille’s Logic of the Paradox and its Mixed opposites.

IV 1.2 The Non-Knowledge of Kierkegaard and Bataille

IV 1.3 Is Related to the Irony of their Absurdity

IV 1.4 And to Dramatizing the Agapeic Event

IV 1.5 As it repeats the Gita’s Advaita Vedanta Drama

IV 1.6 And the Gita’s Personal God Drama

IV 1.7 Leads us to the Question of Bataillean Communication

IV 1.8 Even in the Mysticism of Mark’s Gospel

IV 1.9 So that we might Wonder about Mystical Reconciliation

IV.2 Eternal Love and Bataillean Death

(From Nietzsche to Bataille)

Eschatology and the Secrets of its Anxiety

Mark’s Temporal Son of David, Apocalyptic Son of Man

Resurrected Son of God and the Women Frightened

out of their Wits.

The Gita’s Vision and Arjuna’s Hair standing on end.

IV.2.1 Bataille’s Nietzschean Physiology Reconciling Opposites

IV.2.2 Nietzsche’s Mystical Eternal Return

IV.2.3 The Son of David’s Highest Formula of Affirmation

IV.2.4 The Son of Man’s Move from Death to Life

IV.2.5 The Son of God’s Death and Resurrection

IV.2.6 So it is with Arjuna as he Beholds the Dying.

IV.2.7 But for Nietzsche and Bataille it is the Death of God

IV.2.8 Through God’s Death we can Live Forever.

IV.2.9 The Child-like Yes and Amen of Nietzsche and Bataille

IV.3 Universal Love and Bataillean Religion

(From St. John of the Cross to Bataille)

The Desire to be Everything and its Mystical Secrets

Mark’s Twofold Agape between God and Man

and for Neighbor and even the Enemy

The Gita’s Bhakti between God and Man

and the Secrets of its Self-Realization Ethics

IV.3.1 Bataille’s Mystical Psychology of reconciliation

IV.3.2 John of the Cross’ Bataillean Psychology of Ego and Ipse

IV.3.3 As they reveal the Holy as the Secret of the Sacred

IV.3.4 For the Holy is a Mysterium Tremendum

IV.3.5 Before which there is a Dramatic Loss of the Self.

IV.3.6 In an other-realization ethics with Jesus

IV.3.7 And not the Self-Realization Ethics even of the Gita

IV.3.8 The Christ of John of the Cross leads Bataille to Torment

IV.3.9 And Teaches him to Renounce his Ego and Himself

Part Two: The Wisdom of Love

I. In Franciscan Spirituality

I.4 And He Leaves Her and the Seminary for Loyola

I.4.1 Fraternity

I.4.2 Mirth

I.4.3 Trust

1.4.4 Hope

I.4.5 Intimacy

I.4.6 Individuality

I.4.7 Communality

I.5 Growing in the Love of Wisdom at Loyola

I.5.1 By Studying Sartre’s Being and Nothingness

I.5.2 By Studying Kierkegaard’s Sickness Unto Death

I.5.3 By Studying Nietzsche’s Anti-Christ

I.5.4 By Studying Heidegger’s Being and Time

I.5.5 By Studying Husserl’s Cartesian Meditations

I.5.6 By Studying Scheler’s On the Eternal in Man

I.5.7 By Writing my Master’s Thesis on John Wild’s Existentialism

I.5.8 By Studying Gilson and Maritain

I.5.9 By Studying the Philosophy of Josiah Royce

I.6 Learning the Wisdom of Love with the Franciscan Sisters

I.6.1 Graced with a New Feeling for the Beautiful Holy

I.6.2 Sr. Helen Marie Taught me the Franciscan Wisdom of Love.

I.6.3 I Came to have Special Friendships with Some Students

I.6.4 For Barbara Henning and I Worked Very Much Together.

I.6.5 And Kathleen Thompson Taught Me How to Drive

I.6.6 And Sarah Jungels Took me Home with Her

I.6.7 We had an Adult Education Course on Love

I.6.8 And with Fr. Ernest I Taught the Old Testament

I.6.9 And I Loved Five Beautiful Young Sisters

II. And Mark’s Agapetos

II.4 The Agapetos Reveals the Abba Father’s Childlike Agape

II.4.1 And the Twelve Must Trust Him like Children

II.4.2 Even Though They Might be Killed like John the Baptist

II.4.3 Jesus Feeds the Crowds Who are Like Hungry Children

II.4.4 And Jesus Shows How the Father Loves the Sick

II.4.5 And Jesus Teaches a True Childlike Reverence

II.4.6 But His Disciples Do Not Understand Him

II.4.7 For They Do Not Yet Understand an Agapeic Heart

II.4.8 And How Jesus Will Love Them as He Has

II.4.9 Jesus Ironically Lets the Blind Man See

II.5 The Agapetos Reveals his Eternal Agape

II.5.1 At his Transfiguration he is again called the Agapetos

II.5.2 His First Prophecy of his Passion and Resurrection

II.5.3 The Agapetos’ Altruistic Love implies his Eternal Love

II.5.4 Jesus Teaches them of Agapeic Prayer.

II.5.5 His Second Prophecy of his Passion and Resurrection

II.5.6 The Agapetos’ Eternal Agape is Childlike

II.5.7 His third Prophecy of his Death and Resurrection

II.5.8 The Disciples begin to Understand Agape as Eternal

II.5.9 Faith in Agape Grows through Prayer

II.6 Agape, the Greatest Commandment of All

II.6.1 Is further Explained in the 5th Major Section

II.6.2 Which begins with his Triumphal Entry into Jerusalem

II.6.3 An Agape that Curses Fig Trees to teach Forgiveness.

II.6.4 And that curses Money Changers in the Temple

II.6.5 These days of preparing them for Agape

II.6.6 Getting your Mind and Heart Right with Respect to Taxes

II.6.7 And Beginning to ponder the Resurrection of the Body

II.6.8 Agape with all our Heart, Soul, Mind and Strength

II.6.9 And Agape for our Neighbor as we have it for ourself.

III. And The Tamil Culture

III.4 How Krishna’s Bhakti can bring Persons to Jesus’ Agape

III.4.1 From a Self-Realization to an Other Realization Ethics

III.4.2 From a Universal to a Missionary Universal Love

III.4.3 From a Spiritual to a Fully Personal Eternal Love

III.4.4 From a Conditional Bhakti to an Unconditional Agape

III.4.5 From a Sophisticated Bhakti to a Childlike Agape

III.4.6 From Bhakti’s Stages of Purity to Agapeic Celibacy

III.4.7 From a Limited to an Unlimited Missionary Task

III.4.8 From the Purgatory of Rebirth to Agapeic Purgatory

III.4.9 From Loving God to an Agapeic Love of Neighbor too

III.5 The Dravidian Background of the Gita’s Bhakti

III.5.1 What made Possible the Gita’s Leap Forward with Bhakti?

III.5.2 The God Siva in Early Tamil Texts

III.5.3 The Sudden Appearance of Bhakti in Southern India

III.5.4 Bhakti in Three Early Tamil Texts

III.5.5 The Dravidian Siva in the Pattinappali

III.5.6 The Dravidian God, Siva, in the Tolkappiyam

III.5.7 Dravidian Love in the Tirukkural

III.5.8 Tamil Bhakti in the Kural

III.5.9 South India’s Ancient Bhakti cult

III.6 A Study of Bhakti and Philosophy with Singh

III.6.1 Seeing Bhakti in its Wider Context

III.6.2 The Term bhag the Root of Bhakti is in the Vedas

III.6.3 The Meaning of Bhaj and its Relation to Prema

III.6.4 The Root of Singh’s Disagreement with Dhavamony

III.6.5 Does the Bhakti of the Gita Arise from Secular Love?

III.6.6 Does Singh’s Argument Against Dhavamony Work?

III.6.7 The Singh-Dhavamony Debate

III.6.8 Makes us Think More Deeply into Agape and Bhakti

III.6.9 Raj Singh, the Sikh, and Guru Nanak

IV. And The Sacred’s Secrets

IV.4 Childlike Love and Bataillean Art

(From Bataille to Breton, Sartre and Marcel)

Beyond the Project of Self-Realization Ethics

The Vocation of Mark’s Jesus to his Disciples and the Women

The Gita and the Eight Steps of Patanjalis’ Yoga

IV.4.1 Sartre Does Not Appreciate Bataille’s Altruistic Ethics

IV.4.2 For Sartre makes a Project of Self-Realization Ethics

IV.4.3 And does not Appreciate Jesus’ Agapeic Ethics

IV.4.4 But sees Bataille Only as a Big-Time Sinner

IV.4.5 Marcel Misinterprets Bataille’s Refusal of Salvation

IV.4.6 And sees Him as Miserable without God.

IV.4.7 And as a Mad, Egomaniacal Nihilist

IV.4.8 Breton Sees Bataille as Preoccupied with the Obscene

IV.4.9 And Yet This is the Secret of Bataille’s Surrealism

IV.5 Unconditional Love and Bataillean Sovereignty

(From Bataille to Kristeva)

The Stabat Mater and Difference Feminism

Mark’s Persons in Process on Trial

The Gita’s move from Liberation Salvation

IV.5.1 Bataille and Kristeva’s Psychoanalytic Revolution

IV.5.2 Bataille and Kristeva’s Poetic Revolution

IV.5.3 Bataille and Kristeva’s Semiotic Revolution

IV.5.4 Bataille and Kristeva’s Sexual Revolution

IV.5.5 Bataille and Kristeva’s Women’s Revolution

IV.5.6 Bataille and Kristeva’s Philosophic Revolution

IV.5.7 Bataille and Kristeva’s Scientific Revolution

IV.5.8 Bataille and Kristeva’s Christian Revolution

IV.5.9 Bataille and Kristeva’s Political Revolution

IV.6 Celibate Love and Bataillean Transgression

(From Bataille to Foucault)

From Animal to Human Sexuality and its History

Mark’s Women and Herstory of Sublimation

The Gita’s Freedom from the Gunas of Prakriti

IV.6.1 Bataille, Foucault and the Heart of Divine Love

IV.6.2 Their Notion of Animal and Human Sexuality

IV.6.3 And of Transgression and the Sacred

IV.6.4 In the Play of Limits and Transgression

IV.6.5 Transgression Can Even be Glorious

IV.6.6 And Help Free Us from the Gunnas of Prakrity

IV.6.7 And Can be an Affirmative Postmodern Leap

IV.6.8 So that Bataille and Foucault are Men of Prayer

IV.6.9 As Transgression Takes Them Beyond Hegel

Part Three: To The Things Themselves

I. In Phenomenology

I.7 From St. Francis to the Phenomenology Workshop

I.7.1 Spiegelberg’s Workshop in St. Louis

I.7.2 Doing Phenomenology Together

I.7.3 Even as Sartre Did in The Devil and the Good Lord

I.7.4 And as Kierkegaard Did with His Four Stages

I.7.5 And We Did Discuss Heidegger the Nazi

I.7.6 But I Became Most Intrigued with Scheler

I.7.7 Because He was the Philosopher of Love

I.7.8 And I Taught Kierkegaard, Scheler and Marcel

I.7.9 And Barbara Henning and I Worked on Being and Time

I.8 From Loyola to the Phenomenology Workshop

I.8.1 John Wild’s View of the Community and the Individual

I.8.2 Got me Thinking about Love and Personhood

I.8.3 My Professors at Loyola Discussed All This with Me

I.8.4 And 1966 was a Big Year

I.8.5 I Presented Being and Time and Got a New Job

I.8.6 The Autobiographical Consciousness

I.8.7 The Story of Sex, Religion and Art

I.8.8 The Three Great Secret Things

I.8.9 The Autobiographical Unconsciousness

I.9 Getting back to the European Roots

I.9.1 With Wilhelmina’s Family in Simpelveld

I.9.2 In Her Country of Holland

I.9.3 At the Goethe Institute in Brilon

I.9.4 At the Goethe Institute in Berlin

I.9.5 On our European Trip

I.9.6 Studying in Bonn

I.9.7 Flying back to Chicago

I.9.8 More Reflection on the Three Great Secret Things

I.9.9 Settling in at Brock University

II And Mark’s Reconciliation

II.7 The Altruism, Eternalism and Universalism of Mark’s Jesus

II.7.1 True Altruism Loves the Neighbor as Oneself

II.7.2 The Poor Widow Loved Altruistically

II.7.3 The Universal Agape of the Apocalyptic Discourse

II.7.4 Will be Proclaimed by the Holy Spirit through the Disciples

II.7.5 And Jesus’ Eternal Agape Will Not Pass Away

II.7.6 And We Must Not be Deceived about It

II.7.7 For Jesus Did Teach us to Love like Children

II.7.8 And He Does Reveal our Sweet Abba Father

II.7.9 And the Women Who Loved their Sweet Jesus

II.8 The Unconditional, Childlike, Celibate Love of Mark’s Jesus

II.8.1 The Agape of Mark’s Jesus is Unconditional

II.8.2 And is So Loving it Leaves with Us the Eucharist

II.8.3 The Agape of Mark’s Jesus is Childlike

II.8.4 The Agape of Mark’s Jesus is Celibate

II.8.5 Jesus’ Unconditional Agape Lets Him be Scourged

II.8.6 And it Lets Him Accept the Crown of Thorns

II.8.7 And it Brings Him to Carry the Cross of Love

II.8.8 And to Die on the Cross out of Love for Us

II.8.9 Even His Loving Death could Convert Others

II.9 The Resurrection Most of All Gives us Faith in Agape

II.9.1 And Jesus Foretold it All Along

II.9.2 The Women were Struck with Amazement

II.9.3 But the Young Man Told Them Not to be Amazed

II.9.4 And He Tells Them to tell Peter and the Disciples

II.9.5 And the Women are Frightened Out of Their Wits

II.9.6 How are We to Understand the Agape of Mark’s Gospel?

II.9.7 The Added Part on the Appearances of Christ

II.9.8 Proclaim the Gospel to All Creation

II.9.9 Does Mark have Many Messianic Secrets about Agape?

And Beyond The Caste System

III.7 Dr. Singh’s Treatment of the Narada Bhakti Sutra

III.7.1 Can Lead Us to Refine our Understanding of Bhakti

III.7.2 As Bhakti becomes the Standard for All Loves

III.7.3 It Lets the Lover be Overjoyed, Quiet, Self-Satisfied

III.7.4 As Knowledge of God Helps Him to Love God

III.7.5 And to See that God is Like a King

III.7.6 And that the Poor People can be the Most Loving

III.7.7 Bhakti is an Indescribable Mystery

III.7.8 Bhakti, though One, Appears in Eleven Forms

III.7.9 And it Manifests Itself Through Lovers

III.8 The Bhakti Movement and Bhakti Literature

III.8.1 All the Arts of India Express Bhakti

III.8.2 But Singh Concentrates Especially on Literature

III.8.3 And Brings out Bhakti as the One in the Many

III.8.4 Singh Quotes Krishna Sharma to Bring out Differences

III.8.5 And Yet he Must be Critical of Even Her

III.8.6 What is the Sikh View about Bhakti?

III.8.7 Bhakti is the Prime Mover of Art in India

III.8.8 Chandulal and Raj Singh on Bhakti

III.8.9 From Bhakti and the Caste System to Agape

III.9 Bhakti and the History of Western Agape

III.9.1 Jesus, Krishna and the Caste System

III.9.2 Augustine, the Caritas Synthesis and Serving Others

III.9.3 Benedict and Bringing Agriculture to Europe

III.9.4 Dominic and Serving the City’s Poor

III.9.5 Francis and Agape for all God’s Creatures

III.9.6 Ignatius Loyola and Modern Agape

III.9.7 The Agape of St. Theresa of Avila and St. John of the Cross

III.9.8 Mother Teresa’s Agape for the Poor of Calcutta.

III.9.9 The Brock Philosophy Department Learns from all the Others

IV. Which Science Cannot Know

IV. 7 Missionary Love and the Bataillean Simulachra

(From Bataille to Klossowski)

Successfully Proclaiming the Gospel

to Every Creature with a Communication

that Fails and the Simulachra of the Gita

IV.7.1 Communicating the Movements of Pathos with Simulachra.

IV.7.2 Which are Not Ideas but like Ideas

IV.7.3 Which can Poetically Express the Agony and the Ecstasy

IV.7.4 And the Carefree Abandon that Brings One to Laughter

IV.7.5 So that We Might Die with Laughter.

IV.7.6 And Express our Laughter Until we Cry

IV.7.7 Over an Expenditure Tending towards Pure Loss

IV.7.8 Bataille is a Missionary Speaking in Poetic Simulachra

IV.7.9 That Others Might become Sovereign Suffering

IV.8 Purgatorial Love and Battaillean Violence

(From Bataille to Derrida)

Mourning the Guilt of Decisions

Made over the Abyss of Indecidability

For Justice must be Done

in this Life or the Next

IV.8.1 The Instant of decision is Madness (Kierkegaard)

IV.8.2 The Decision to Give the Pure Gift

IV.8.3 And Move from a Restricted to a General Economy

IV.8.4 On to the Move from Hegel to Nietzsche

IV.8.5 And from Hegel’s Lordship to Bataille’s Sovereignty

IV.8.6 And from Hegelian Continuity to the Simulacrum

IV.8.7 Brings us from Desoeuvrement to Dissemination

IV.8.8 And from Dramatization to Difference

IV.8.9 For in doubling Lordship Sovereignty is Dialectical

IV.9 Loving Love and the Bataillean Sacrifice

(From Bataille to Boldt)

The New Mystical Theology’s,

Nine Philosophical Implications

Mark’s Agape and its Nine Implications

The Gita’s Bhakti and its Nine Implications

IV.9.1 Bataille’s New Mystical Theology

IV.9.2 Implies a New Ethics of Altruistic Love

IV.9.3 And a New Economy of Pure Giving

IV.9.4 And a New Politics of the Human Family

IV.9.5 And a New Metaphysics of Excess

IV.9.6 And a New Epistemology of Nominalism

IV.9.7 And a New Logic of Mixed Opposites

IV.9.8 And a New Psychology of Embodied Spirit

IV.9.9 And a New Poetics

Introduction

As we continue these millennial meditations

on two thousand years of agape

we now have the opportunity to see how

agape and bhakti do and can complement each other.

The four-thousand-year-old history

of mysticism and its kind of love in India

has been a great gift for the entire family of man.

As I made my transition from seminary life

at Mt. Angel and St. Thomas Seminary in Seattle

to the Jesuits of Loyola of Chicago

and the Franciscan Sisters and students of Joliet, Illinois,

I was greatly helped in coming to understand

the efforts of meditation and the gifts of contemplation

by Jane Sheldon during the first love of that Sun Valley summer

to the sublimation of erotic inspiration.

I was advised to leave the seminary and then

the Jesuits opened me to all of philosophy.

Mark’s good news is the story of Jesus’ agape

in all nine traits of its altruism, universality,

eternality, unconditionality, childlikeness, celibacy,

missionary love, purgatorial and love of love.

The passion, death and resurrection of Jesus shows us

how to love the other as more important than ourselves.

This agape is the fulfilment of bhakti in all nine ways

and lets us appreciate in the Bhagavad Gita

the two great ways of loving God.

Bataille brings all of this together by showing us

love’s nine great secret things in sex, death, religion,

art, sovereignty, transgression, sacrifice,

violence, and the economy of the gift.

Graduate School

From the Seminary to Loyola of Chicago

After being in the seminary for nine years

I still had to confess the sin of masturbation.

But then I met and fell in love with Jane

and soon I said to myself

How cleansed and purified I feel.

I had gone through the first mystical stage

of purgation and now I was ready for illumination.

One night I awakened from a dream about sex

and I just thought of my dear Janie

and the temptation fled away.

I knew that I would love her forever

and that I could be pure forever just like

Dante and the courtly lovers of the Middle Ages.

Ironically now that I could be pure

my confessor asked me to leave the seminary

because a priest should not be falling in love.

Jane was going to Northwestern University

in Evanston, Illinois, just north of Chicago

so I applied to the philosophy graduate program

at Loyola of Chicago and was accepted.

By the time I got to Loyola in January

Jane already had a real and normal boyfriend.

So we had some lovely meetings but I was free

to study philosophy which all seemed so real.

It seemed that at the heart of each philosophy

was a philosophy of love and I just loved

studying Plato especially his Symposium

and his Phaedrus which explained sublimation.

Aristotle, the Stoics, the Medievals and

the Postmodernists each had a new philosophy of love.

From Loyola to the College of St. Francis

Father Hecht SJ, the chair of the philosophy department at Loyola,

took excellent care of me by giving me a scholarship that took care

of everything from tuition, to room and board, to all of my books.

He introduced me to Mr. Kelling who took me to live with him

in a wonderful hotel right next to the downtown Loyola Tower.

Then he told me that they needed a philosophy teacher at St. Francis

College in Juliet, Illinois about fifty miles south of Chicago.

The wonderful sisters of St. Francis took me as their colleague

and after having lived in a community of men for nine years

I was now in a community of most beautiful ladies who had

the highest ideas of holy love and wisdom as they were educated

and then taught others in grade school, high school and college.

I could teach whatever I wanted to learn and we always thought

together about the Augustinian, Thomistic and Franciscan philosophies.

I took a course on Plotinus at Loyola from Fr. Nurnberger SJ

and I thought deeply about Augustine’s reflections on him.

Augustine’s motto came to be "credo ut intellegam,"

I believe that I might understand,

and that took him beyond mystical monism

to the gift of faith in the dignity of all persons as children of God.

The Franciscan nuns loved making clear how the Franciscans

built upon this and how Scotus showed the uniqueness of each person

and how Ockham showed how we can never know the complex person

but how our faith can let us love all as did St. Francis.

As a youth in the seminary I read the works of St. John of the Cross.

The active meditative night of the soul and the passive contemplative

night of the soul fit right in with Augustine fulfilling Plotinus

and with the Franciscan extension of love to all of God’s creatures.

I was so fortunate to be able to learn with the beautiful Sisters

and the beautiful students and for nine years absence made

my heart grow fonder then all of a sudden presence gifted me

with the heavenly delight of the other half of my soul for ever and ever.

From Loyola and St. Francis to the Phenomenology Workshop

In 1964, Herbert Spiegelberg got a grant and was able to invite

ten philosophers for a two-week seminar on phenomenology.

I was one of seven Americans and John Mayer, who founded the

philosophy department at Brock, was one of the three Canadians.

We all came to see that phenomenology is a theory of intentional

consciousness, an attitude of respect for the concrete and a

method of description begun by Husserl and continued by many.

At Loyola I was introduced to phenomenology by studying

Sartre’s Being and Nothingness and we read Heidegger’s

Being and Time as soon as it was translated into English.

I continued to work on it with Barbara Henning at St. Francis.

I memorized the eighty-four headings in the table of contents and gave

a talk on it at the second workshop in 1965 and John Mayer

asked me if I would like to come to Brock University to teach.

That was fortunate for me because at St. Francis a beautiful

young nun, Sister Carolyn, became ill with tuberculosis

and when I visited her in the infirmary I told her that I would

pray for her twice each day and I believed that she would recover.

I told her that I loved her as if she were my sister, or my

mother or my wife and that I would always love her forever.

She told this to Sister Anita Marie, the president of the college.

Sister called me to her office and told me I should not

speak like that and that I should get a job teaching elsewhere.

So when Dr. Mayer asked me to come to Brock it was a relief.

Studying phenomenology prepared me well for what I would

encounter at Brock and especially the idea of intentional

consciousness helped me to think about agape and bhakti.

The monistic mysticism which sees Atman as Brahman

sees Brahman as pure being, pure bliss and pure consciousness.

A personal God always has an intentional consciousness

as distinct from the pure consciousness of monistic mysticism.

From the Catholic World to a Secular University

Mervyn Sprung grew up a Protestant and received his PhD

in Philosophy from the University of Berlin and deep in his mind

and heart he was a Buddhist for he loved a philosophy of peace.

As a Corporal in the army he thought about the war-like ways

of the people of the Book and the Indian world was not like that.

Mervyn was always most friendly to me and I thank him from

the bottom of my heart for because of him I was able to learn

the philosophies of the East and even came to teach the Gita.

John Mayer was born of a Jewish father and a Calvinist

mother and had no inclination in either direction but became

a Unitarian loving process philosophy and the thought of Buber.

John also studied the Hindu and Buddhist philosophies and,

like Mervyn, felt more at home with them than Judeo-Christianity.

At Brock we never had an Islamic philosopher but we did

have several Islamic students and some became majors.

As a Catholic I could be open to other religions and their

philosophies just as could John and Mervyn and they saw

and appreciated that as we debated and worked together.

Just as Augustine learned from Platonists and Thomas from

Aristotelians and the Franciscans from the Stoics so now

with John and Mervyn I was eager to learn from India.

In my introductory course I often taught the Bhagavad Gita

together with Plato, Augustine, Descartes, Kierkegaard, and Nietzsche.

From the beginning I taught the philosophy of love and

many students came to love understanding how agape,

eros, bhakti, amor fati and the Works of Love could all

work together and compliment each other in a person’s life.

Many students came to love the love of wisdom and the wisdom

of love and became members of the Brock Philosophy Society.

Still today, Jews, Catholics, Moslems, Protestants, Secular

Humanists, Hindus, Buddhists, Taoists, and others work together.

Mark’s Good News

The Agapetos Reveals Trinitarian Love

Mark begins his Gospel with the Baptism of Jesus.

No sooner had he come up out of the water

then he saw the heavens torn apart

and the Spirit, like a dove, descending on him

and a voice came from heaven.

"You are my Son, the Beloved;

my favor rests on you."

The original Greek word for Beloved is "Agapetos" and so Jesus’

new love is announced right away in this little statement.

We are told about the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit who is like a dove.

Then right in the middle of Mark’s Gospel at the transfiguration

again we read,

And a cloud came, covering them in shadow;

and there came a voice from the cloud,

This is my Son, the Beloved, Listen to him.

Again the Father refers to his Son with the word agape which is

what Jesus came to act out by exorcising the possessed,

healing the sick, forgiving sinners and caring for the poor.

The entire message of Mark’s Gospel is the good news of this love.

Mark’s Gospel nears completion with the centurion, the Roman

soldier saying, In truth this man was a son of God.

He came to see this because of the love and peaceful tranquility

which Jesus exhibited as he suffered the cruelest torture and death.

These three statements at the beginning, the middle and the end

of Mark’s Gospel emphasize the agape of Jesus which he came to

preach, teach and exemplify to his disciples and to all persons.

Right away we learn of the love