I have spent all morning with irritating, trivial practical concerns, becoming highly upset and was going to calm myself down by translating that wonderful Marie-Claire Galperine and HER Damascius when I glanced over your letter, saw your notations were in blue and easy to discern, interesting at first, and then downright fascinating, as well as bringing up issues I truly need toclarify for myself.

To set the background, I do not know how much you know about Heidegger. He is impossibly complicated personally, and is poorly understood in the English, German, and French speaking world. I can ONLY recommended Thomas Sheehan without qualification. If you can get his book KARL RAHNER before it goes out of print, do so. You do not read it for the Rahner, you read it for the background of misunderstanding that Sheehan magnificently defines the real thought of Heidegger. I also guarentee you can get MANY other good things out of it. But get it soon. No one diservedly is interested in Rahner anymore. I am even seriously thinking of ordering a second copy for myself. ALSO, there is a site for Sheehan that has a number of wonderful things by himself as well as demonstrating what kind of truly good and HONEST person he is.

http://www.stanford.edu/dept/relstud/faculty/sheehan/Sheehan.html

Also for Hubert L. Dreyfus, a fine man and good thinking on Heidegger, Merleau-Ponty, and Foucault, but pragmatist oriented which, however, gives a VERY interested slant on Heidegger!

http://search.yahoo.com/search? p=Hubert+L.+Dreyfus&hq=site%3aist-socrates.berkeley.edu&b=21&hc=0&hs=1&xargs=

http://ist-socrates.berkeley.edu/~hdreyfus/html/paper_heidandfoucault.html

http://ist-socrates.berkeley.edu/~hdreyfus/rtf/Heidegger-Intelligibility_1099.rtf

Also a VERY interesting doctoral thesis on line by Peter Durigon:

http://www.geocities.com/peterdurigon/

And a sight that includes everything on Heidegger, including Sheehan if the above link does not work:

http://www.webcom.com/paf/ereignis.html

As I proceed with Damascius, he becomes a stranger and stranger figure, becoming more and more different from his fellow Neoplatonists. On the key issue of the "One,"
(much like I had with Shankara), he is not at all like Plotinus. He differs greatly from Proclus, though in Proclus' COMMENTARY ON THE PARMENIDES I see some very strange and almost 'postmodernist' and 'deconstructionist' things going on. In Damascius this becomes down right overt. Then, in an initially trivial comparison of Damascius and Heidegger of Damascius' "One (you, me, him) still exists and is doing something even when one is doing nothing," with Heidegger's analysis of fundamental boredom in the statement "One is bored," a very common upper-class, 'cultural,' elitest statement, where he makes it clear when "one" is truly profoundly bored, when nothing in the universe is important anymore, EVEN THE EGO HAS BEEN ERASED! When "one" is profoundly bored -- JUST LIKE MERSAULT in Albert Camus' L'ESTRANGER (THE STRANGER) -- one can kill people just to see if it makes a difference. With Mersault it did not. Only the day of his execution made a difference. AND IT WAS THE MOST WONDERFUL EXPERIENCE OF HIS LIFE! When "one" is profoundly bored, myself, your self, God's self become unbearably trivial. They are all erased. JIVANMUKTA. Mersault was one so "released," and I can and have argued so just on the grounds of Indian, Advaita mainly of different kinds. But that is a great deal of reading.

And you may not like this, but I can argue this also applies to the god Shiva, the god of any and every aspect, and now more or less satisfactorily accepted by scholars as the oldest continuously worshipped god in the world. If Westerners think the god Dionysios of Euripides' THE BACCHATS is terrifying, Shiva can be much more terrible, much more humble, much more bloodthirsty, must more meditative, make terrible blunders and yet out-think all the other gods including Brahma. There is no other anywhere really like him?????

The point is, the "one" -- which is regularly interpreted in the West as God -- is not God and is not one self. It is not a way of identifying oneself with God because there is no God and there is no self. Essentially what Shankara was really trying to say (howls in the background; He is totally unqualified to talk of such things!") But unless I raise the issue like this, who will? Maybe Sunthar. There is no place for God in either Damascius or Heidegger just like there is no place for self. They are "ontic" things. The "one" is a . . . . of pure possibility. So, in a thorough and profound sense, they are both the most realistic and truest athiesms, and I would interpret Shankara in the same way. "One" can have gods, but "one" cannot have God. Now, from here . . .

JOHN BEE:

I do not know how old you may be, but none ever dies; see the second chapter of the Gita, I do not remember the verse number, but it is something like najayatenamriyate vakadachit.

Damascius, Heidegger, and I would take "none ever dies" perfectly literally and it is a perfect expression of my way of thought. This is to be taken in all of its several senses including, Since the self never really existed, then the self obviously cannot die. Also, and especially relevant, "the none is ever dying." This is not mockery. I think you and Sunthar are thoroughly aware of the double, triple, and quadruple meanings of much of Indian philosophy. It is Paul's "All things to all people.'

JOHN BEE:

Nobody ever does anything . . . so.. indeed! what does it matter?

GARY C MOORE:

With but very slight editing, this is perfect and I agree perfectly. And, so expressed, agrees perfectly with what I said above.

JOHN BEE:

. . . refering to the moronic compartmentalization of narrow disciplines,[ Indeed all compartmentalization of knowledge is moronic, Knowlegde is God and God is one is my position].

Gary C. MOORE:

But then . . . Can you HAVE a "position," a TOPOS, a place? There are two aspects of "place." The everyday They-self, "This is my position." and then there is the TOPOS of Aristotle and Heidegger and Nietzsche, "I am the center place of the universe that positions all things including God in relation to me, and if I die all these things die with me. This is no megalomania for I bear the terrible responsibility of keeping all these things 'alive' and I am responsible for the history of all the terrible things that have happened in the past and every trivial thing I have ever done has perpetuates all of this. And yet the thought almost terrifies me that, when I die, there is no other "I" I know of, really, that will keep this all still in existence. How, if I did not create it, and I did not, how did I get the responsibility for ALL OF IT?"

ETC: My major enlightenment of Heidegger and the Neoplatonics came through a reading of Shankara's wonderful BHRAMASUTRABASYA and Jeffry Masson's book about Abhiunavagupta[ I do not know about Jeffry Masson, but any Commentary by Abhinavagupta, would be of interest to me and thanks for the information that there is such a commentary.].

GARY C MOORE:

Sunthar and I have talked a great deal about this commentary at the beginning of this list. He does not like Masson, thinks he is very inaccurate, and he makes his point very well and which should always be taken into account when reading Masson. But Masson's very LIFE after he wrote it is a VERY profound commentary on what he wrote. And what he wrote on Abhinavagupta's aesthetics still makes a VERY profound impact on me. (I say "very" a lot don't I?) One must remember that, I think, all scholars agree that Abhinavagupta's 'religious' stage came first (the TANTRALOKA). Then many say his philosophy stage came second and his aesthetic speculations culminated his thought. That actually has to be that way, for he said, and I quoted this somewhere in those letters, that the highest aesthetic experience of great liturature surpasses the religious experience of the greatest yogi. IF I REMEMBER RIGHT, Sunthar did not disagree with that SPECIFIC point, though aspects of it he may thoroughly qualify. I thought it was one of the most profound things a human being EVER said.

GCM:

This is all FAR beyond my knowledge, but I do have a copy of Abhinavagupta's commentary on the BAHAVAGAD GITA.{ Thanks; and I must get a copy of this] I have not read it. Bad reviews discouraged me. [ If Abhinava has written one who is to give him a bad review? I simply donot understand.]

GCM:

The translator, I remember, said no one had bothered with translating iy before because they said Abhinavagupta merely wrote it because his family expected it of him and therefore there was very little that was original in it. However, the little bits I read I read I found very exciting, but then . . . that may just be me. Some days I can be fascinated by a beatle crossing my path. I no longer like to kill insects. Intelligence has ABSOLUTELY NO RELATION to brain size. That beatle may be thinking more profound thoughts about God than you or I are. Maybe life as a beatle could be very much more beautiful than the life of anything else. Anything is more beautiful than the life of a human being.

JB:

ETC: I will help in any way I can. Latin based languages may work best at this[ Sir you are gentleman and a scholar ; and you have already helped me, just keep in touch].

GARY C MOORE:

SYSTRAN seems to be the best company. I tried "World" and it was a complete disaster. Remember, it is good for good philosophy like Aristotle or exacting scholarship that does not get metaphorical. Anything "popular," "slangy," or "liturature" is a disaster. A business man needs exact information and straight talk, exactly the way philosophy should be.

The Italians have done a great deal with Indian philosophy[ This is totally unknown to me.]

There is an Italian, I think mentioned in the early letters -- Sunthar would know -- that translated the whole of the TANTRALOKA. There is a Frenchwoman, writing on Kundalini that translated small parts in relation to that -- and the book KUNDALINI, or something, was translated into English and Published by the State University of New York Press, a very good publisher of philosophy including all kinds of Indian philosophy. Her Indian teacher of Kundalini, by the way, did not think it was a very good idea at all to write about it.

JOHN BEE:

I live in Maryland, in a place called Savage.

GARY C MOORE:

Sir, you are very privileged. You live in a countryside of truly profound American history. Gettysburg to the northwest, Antietam creek (Sharpsburg -- the Confederates named battles after the towns, the Union after natural features) and its terrible cornfield to the West, Harpers' Ferry to the WSW, Bull Run, Fredericksburg, Chancelorsville, the Peninsula (Malvern Hill, Frazer's Farm, the Seven Days battles), Petersburg, Appomattox to the south. And the Wilderness. Truly named. The son of Oliver Wendell Holmes, SR, a windbag, Oliver Wendell Holmes Junior, officer in the Union Army became a philosopher there. At one particularly terrible part of a horrifying battle called The Bend for a 'bend' or angle in a wood slat fence, he saw a mound of supposedly dead men. And, as he watch, he could see arms and legs move. But the men were buried too deeply to save and the battle was continuos (over a week?). When his enlistment ran out, he left the army, a shame to his blustering father. He became Chief Justice of the Massachusetts Supreme Court and the founder of "pragmatism," and, essentially, was the noblest exponent of that cause.

JOHN BEE:

and I will furnish you with my phone number in personal e-mail, if you agree to speask with me at some point, and certainly I cann call you.

GARY C MOORE:

That would not work well for several insurmountable reasons, work-paranoia-depression (all one thing to me) making me not perform very well as a human being any more. I wake up with nightmares precisely at midnight whether I have had one hour's sleep or ten.

But anyway, the information I have already obtained from you shows that there is lot more to the world of learning than I could gotten just from Yale Columbia and Banaras Hindu University;

GARY C MOORE:

Maybe, but I would loved to have visted Banares Hindu University. And the campus of the University of Texas at Austin is truly magnificent and has a great library. But a powerful symbol of where real power lies dominates everything fromthe top of an overlooking hill: the Lyndon Baines Johnson Presidential Library. It does not let you forget.

leaning is life so, : Thank you.] They hahe nly Western translation I know of of the TANTRALOKA of Abhinivagupta[ Pundit Hemendra from Benares, teacher of Dr. Bhattacharya who dr. Visuvalingam studied with is a living encyclopedia on it.].

GARY C MOORE:

I may not have mentioned this: Masson quotes numerous portions in his book, especially the footnotes.

Older German scholarship is still highly respectable, and, though it has been denigrated by fellow Germans, there are some very good new scholars, especially in Biblical literature. However, burn any books by Zimmer. He thinks Shankara is racially an underman, a subhuman. Nazi to the core. [ I have read Zimmer very carefully, and I may not agree with the position that he is not a scholar of the highest standing, regardless of his racial stance. A number of Pundits, I mean Sanskrit Pundits in India that I studied with over the decades, may not be very open and enlightened about the world history, but that will not take their scholastic insights away from them; at least I do not see how their myopia can take their scholastic position away from them. I had been in two month long philosophy seminar, recently, ( as a matter of fact I just finished it last month) which studied Heidegger in details, but I did not see how Heideger's philosophical insights could suffer from any of the political beliefs he may have had.

GARY C MOORE:

This is my position exactly. But on the other hand, we must NEVER EVER forget what he was. He did terrible harm to specific people. He was a truly evil person. But, as you say, still . . . And how can I call him "evil" if the very meaning of "evil" is questionable? Even Jacques Derrida understood that in relation to 'ethically' judging him. How can "one" if "one" does not know what and if "good and evil" are? As Ivan Karamazov said, and this must ALWAYS BE TAKEN FULLY INTO CONSIDERATION, "If God does not exist, all things are permitted." How can "one" if "One is bored with oneself"? See -- all these things have a most fundamentally serious and immediate issue of greatest importance. However, due to lack of interest, the game has been called off . . .

'Sincerely'

Gary C. Moore


P. S. gottlos75@mindspring.com
is my other address