The House that Aristotle built and Aquinas renovated.

“You were not there for the beginning. You will not be there for the end. Your knowledge of what is going on can only be superficial and relative”

William S. Burroughs, Naked Lunch

As a Jesuit seminarian, I was assiduously trained in the rigid theological argumentation designed during the Counter Reformation to win the battle for the Roman hierarchy in a Christian world that was falling apart, burning dissidents, brainwashing its children, and dividing up the spoils of war. It didn’t take a lot of deep discernment to wean me from the inhumanity of that program although it seemed difficult at the time, but, after all that training, it is difficult to step outside the rational/philosophic construct and not apply it without discrimination to all sides of an argument.

The house that Aristotle built forms the basis for the modern scientific method: observation, analysis particularly with regard to logic and causation and its application to the vast array of human endeavors. Aquinas, the precocious boy monk, took the whole lot and applied it to his world, which included the divine. He called his most famous work The Summa Theologica, The Summa for short as if including god was simply understood not just in his world view but the view of his entire world. This is the point that I find most troublesome, though unavoidable given the time and place of 13th century ecclesial scholasticism.

The house that Aquinas built was logical and rational until it wasn’t. Its foundation was set firmly on pillars of an Unmoved Mover; the doors, their hinges and locks were based on what he called sciencia, knowing or grasping the real causes of the universal nature of things; our movement within this structure is governed by our human will which allows us to conform to god’s law, whether expressed through his or her commandments as well as “natural law,” or the distinctive way rational beings participate in this eternal law. God’s law, natural, eternal or divine, always gets top billing.

The dispute I want to tackle has a long and revered lineage in Western philosophy: what happens to religion when confronted with what feels like the harsh challenges of the scientific venture and the completely natural world that it models? Aquinas applied Aristotle to the divine in an almost deistic way until he smashed up against the Deposit of Faith, the revealed Word of God that ended with the death of the last disciple of Jesus. Aquinas and all the schoolmen who followed form the framework of this continuing debate. They repeated the basic flaw--debris from Aquinas’s collision with Revelation litters the house of Aristotle. They claimed that their analysis started with observation of the universe, but it was Revelation that lay at the core of its being. Aquinas famously wrote, “if anything is found in the words of the philosophers that is contrary to the faith, this is not philosophy but rather an abuse of philosophy, due to a failure of reason” (Comm. Boethius De trinitate 2.3c).

I'm not even certain how much support I can muster for my position. Aquinas stated that the basis of his theology was “faith seeking understanding.” In only two decades he raced through all the known works and commentaries of Aristotle and left 8 million exacting words of his own. We had only a year or two to master the basics of his arguments, and it was mind numbing. But in retrospect, I am left with a sense of wonder and enthusiasm as he leapt from connection to insight and the world fell together in a very ordered way. He might have actually felt that he was discovering the divine plan. Understanding was his goal. The separation between the work of theology and philosophy was not as clear as it is today, and the observables in his quest included the phenomena of the natural world and the words of scripture. It was OK when there was no contradiction, but when there was the choice was either mysticism or the kind of rational agnosticism that would be born in the Enlightenment Period.

To further complicate the issue, the leaky basement in Aquinas’s house where observed evidence floated along side dogma, is simply a logical variation of the question that the Jesuits faced when they were crafting the Counter-Reformation although we have to change the predicate; what happens when a tradition laden and wealthy religious establishment is confronted with the harsh challenges of a reform movement, based on valid complaints about doctrine and practice that is gaining in popularity? The Jesuits took the structure of Aquinas’s house and created an inquiry, with particular emphasis on the function of free will. They even decorated the central office with an austere motif that screamed “Te Vult.”

But in terms of my analogy, I have changed the predicate. In the place of scientific venture I have substituted an entrenched doctrinal faith system, and in place of natural world models, I have placed a popular reform movement. I think this is legitimate. The questions bleed into one another muddying the waters. Let me explain.

Looking at the question of the reconciliation between a religious world view and what religionists label materialism with all of the pejorative connotations, I say it is simply a modeling of the world solely on experiential data. It only allows observable data. It is not the same game that Aquinas started in his attempt to reconcile Aristotle with Revelation. That’s a dead horse. Most of the people who represent this train of thought while maintaining a religious world view, call it the death of god in one form or another. It is the inevitable result when you remove the items in the Deposit of Faith that in themselves cannot stand up to the application of observation or verifiable historical confirmation and logic--the Trinity, the Virgin Birth, the Resurrection. The supernatural bits.

Let me shift the context of my argument to my own religious practice. Trying to pinpoint my basic problem with the problem, I have been looking for a good analogy for my conundrum, no I’ll say it, fault, in the argument that somehow the Judeo-Christian-Muslim pantheon in whatever guise, can be imported into Buddhist practice, and that this is possible, or necessary, or, well just inevitable given that we human beings carry around these notions of an active supernatural world as if that in itself makes it so--or even a decent place to begin the debate. We can describe Buddhism as “pretty non-supernatural,” but somehow the gods creep into the Buddhist world. I mean, how many Buddhist pantheons are there? Quite a few. They may be slightly different, some are even more colorful, more magical and chock full of more superstition than their western counterparts so give me a break.

At first I thought that my problem might fall into a quasi-Aristotelian conundrum: We have clear evidence, tons of careful research and analysis, historical, cultural, linguistic, that shows without a shadow of a doubt that humankind has attributed much of the world's causation to some divine intervention or interference. Not to be squandered but how do we hold it? Along comes Buddhism, I sit down and begin an inquiry based on introspection, and realize that most of this narrative is self-created, historically, culturally, linguistically, perhaps even genetically, but it’s there. A seemingly solid block that I have to consider, but looking at this data does not require anything else than I consider it part of our inheritance.

What do I object to and why do I object? With bows to both Descartes and Hume. Up until the advent of philosophical skepticism, the job of the philosopher was to reconcile the worlds of faith and the seemingly disparate world of reason. If you did a convincing job creating a creditable resolution, you got tenure at a really great world class university like Padua or even were made a saint. But the problem for me still remains: what if Zeus, Jehovah, The Ground of Being, the Atman are just an elaborate ponzi scheme devised to maintain the power of a particular worldview? But but but you say, the evidence is there: people have these experiences that we cannot fathom without this explanatory construct. Let’s look at the constructs and see what holds water--so to speak.

It seems to me that whether or not the supernatural exists is a binary choice, yes or no, and not a multiple choice answer with various levels rated from 0 to 9. After we’ve done away with our anthropomorphic thinking, this ‘realm’ or level of reality is entirely beyond human reasoning; it stands outside ordinary experience, and (we posit) exists in some sense. Or do we take our experience of the numinous and use “supernatural" to describe certain parts that we can’t really figure out as if there were multiple choices about the level of supernatural that we choose to describe these kinds of experience. Is truth a popularity contest read by professional pollsters? Whether I rate myself as a 2 with regard to transcendence or a 9--transcendence, that level of reality is defined as either whole and complete in itself and not subject to human intervention, or it is an human invention used as convenient descriptor for those portions of what we seem to hear, feel, and talk about that escape the bounds of our ordinary experience and language as well as the scientific instruments that we have developed to get a handle on what we call “the inexplicable.” A good example is the data collected by Galileo’s telescope, the wrench he threw into the theological cosmology of the 15th century.

This is the phenomena of questions bleeding into one another muddying the waters. When you begin an argument or analysis with a sympathetic description of some famous figure dealing with the intrusion of an inexplicable experience which the person identifies as numinous or “supernatural,” the question is already muddy. I say (actually I am borrowing much of it from a broad reading of post Enlightenment skeptics, Descartes onward), this is the least profitable place to start: the examination of religious thought and literature as well as those remarkable humans who had powerful numinous experiences working within those systems. Of course it will be self-referential. That is how our minds are constructed.

The shape of the question determines the outcome. Any answer has to account for the context that the subject used to frame his or her question. Methodist founder John Wesley famously remarked in a pamphlet about the Calvinist interpretation of Romans 9 “Whatever it means, it cannot mean that.” I read this and said to myself, Wesley was a Zen master? It pretty much reflects much of how I feel about the letters attributed to Paul, more than a few other bits in the Jesus narrative as well as many statements in systematic theology.

So let’s begin afresh. Put the cart before the horse (I don’t think it makes any difference if it’s the other way around), but please subject the contents of the cart to the same careful scrutiny that you gave to Zeus and Jesus, Father and Spirit. Or better yet, examine who is entertaining these fanciful creations.

Go back to your meditation cushion.

Perhaps I have fashioned an answer to a problem that wasn’t even there. And maybe it is just nonsense. Damn there goes that tenure. Aquinas too chose the mystical path.

Mihi videtur ut palea

Father Nolan’s baritone would have made a camel blush

But he launched into “Tantum Ergo”

With the enthusiasm of an Irish barroom brawl.

He was tone deaf 

Bringing the mystery of all things transcendent

Down to earth where mere mortals can fight about them.

Brawls with priests in attendance are nothing new

And not usually a laughing matter.

Choirmaster trains with a whip

No mercy for wayward lads.
Nolan was deadly serious.

I was once on his list.

Aquinas tried to complete the work

Of Nicaea. Truly god is truly god.

True means true. It means

When you bite the coin

It cracks your teeth.

Breath that rattles straw.

More straw please.

San Francisco Has Lost Its Soul

I have been in a lot of pain watching the situation on the streets of San Francisco from afar. I have been turning the situation over in my head more than I should. I have a couple of reactions. I watched a YouTube video from inside a car crossing Market at 6th, a route I’ve taken many times. There weren't just a few, but hundreds of addicts on the street, shooting up, nodding off, trading drugs. From what I could read, the drug was probably Fentanyl. Nasty shit. I was shocked, and I know a few things about street drugs.

Some local business owners want the city to close U.N. Plaza, which is overrun with illegal activity, including vending.

I’ve been there. Let’s call it what it is. Step 1. This is full blown addiction. It’s unmanageable. It’s out of control. It’s causing immense harm. Everyone, from the hard assed cynic to the bleeding heart liberal is powerless. Now let’s be clear, I am not in favor of taking the city through the 12 Steps, and I have lots of problems with the system anyway. But it is how I got sober and at least part of the background for my reaction.

There are lots of possible causes: a massive explosion in the homeless population, the exit of high tech and the resulting economic downturn, the massive disparity in wealth, the lack of savvy leadership. But fuck it, in my recovery it wasn’t that I was lonely or poor or weird, although all that was also probably true. It was the drugs. No matter who is painting the picture or analyzing the problem, don’t lose track of the fact that it’s the fucking drugs.

But then I had a kind of revelation. How did I get sober? Just the steps weren’t enough. Not even close. I also had a vision of what my life could be. Maybe I’d hidden it away. Maybe I’d forgotten it. Maybe my cynical side didn’t believe it, but I knew I was living in the shadows. There was more to life than crystal meth.

San Francisco has had a vision. At least it used to. It was the gateway to the Gold Rush, the Golden Gate. It was Gold Mountain for the Cantonese whose indentured servitude was really just a new version of slavery prohibited after the Civil War. It was the Heart of Golden West, the coast where America built defenses to fight the Great War in the Pacific. It was the place where soldiers and sailors returning from the Guadalcanal and Corregidor disembarked and began to recreate their lives rather than going back to the empty prairies and plains between the coasts

San Francisco has also been known as The City on a Hill, Gay Mecca, Baghdad by the Bay though I could never really figure out why Baghdad, but that was Herb Caen and he came from Sacramento and he was just a newspaper hack so what the hell did he know anyway? It sounded cute. Jack Kerouac called it Frisco thus ever planting him as an outsider. It was a safe haven for the Beat Generation. Ginsberg read Howl in the Western Addition. It changed the face of American literature all the way to the Supreme Court when that meant something. It even helped us define what we can do with language. Mr. Justice [Holmes] said: “A word is not a crystal, transparent and unchanged. It is the skin of living thought and may vary greatly in color and content according to the circumstances and the time in which it is used.”

Part of the vision of what was possible in San Francisco--if you don’t like it, then change it, and change yourselves in the process.

As a San Franciscan for most of my adult life, I know it as the place where the Stonewall Revolution met middle class gay life in a way that changed the political and social landscape forever as well as provided the testing ground for its cohesion during a horrific and tragic public health crisis. That required vision and leadership. Many, but one man in particular, Harvey Milk, rose to the occasion at great personal cost and the GLBTQ community never looked back. That took vision of what was possible against all odds.

The fight against HIV/AIDS was actually longer in terms of San Francisco history, and much more costly in terms of deaths and dollars. Because for more than a decade AIDS was a certain death sentence, it was also an existential crisis for so many friends and comrades. Very difficult terrain. But over time, with an enormous amount of self sacrifice by far too many people, including prodding an underfunded medical research community, there was a real breakthrough.

The problems are huge. The addictive properties of Fentanyl are 500 times more extreme than any other street drugs that have ever been available. The population affected is less educated, articulate and organized than the mostly gay men and women who fought AIDS or rallied for political clout.

The political leadership is simply not equal to the task. But London Breed isn’t the real problem is she? She may be totally corrupt and a complete idiot, but it’s too easy to lay the blame for a completely hopeless situation at her feet, or any feet other than my own. A lot of people are doing that. But she does seem to be adrift.

What has happened to San Francisco? 38,000 individuals in the Bay Area are homeless, an increase of 35 percent since 2019. San Francisco Mayor London Breed wants to carve out $692.6 million in homelessness spending next year to help meet the city's five-year plan to cut homelessness in half. That’s roughly 18,000 a year per person. But currently my sources tell me that a homeless person in San Francisco can receive up to $10,000 in benefits. This is no longer assistance but an incentive.

Someone said that circumstances have created the “perfect storm,” the flood of drugs and the increase in vulnerable populations would defy Wonder Woman. Difficult, yes. This person also mentioned that treatment “beds” are empty, in other words that there are opportunities for addicts seeking treatment to receive professional intervention, but no one wants to get sober. Perhaps this is true. But even after highlighting the problem in 2019, Breed just this month figured out that there might be an easily accessible database to direct case managers, addicts, to these empty “beds,” possible life saving treatments.

The existing nonprofits and substance abuse agencies are bloated, ineffectual and stretched too thin. I just counted 15 free treatment programs, 28 inpatient drug & alcohol rehab centers, 51 outpatient, plus 23 detox centers in the Bay Area, that’s more than 100 separate agencies listed online serving various populations. I appreciate the need for programs suited to an addict’s needs, but you’re not going to convince me that the duplicate administrative costs, already high, as well as multiple development departments chasing the same dollars to run their programs are not draining resources.

Businesses, homeowners and others with a stake in the outcome have been pushed beyond any reasonable limits. Market Street is now almost completely shuttered. San Francisco’s tourism business of more than 8 billion dollars is going to take a massive hit. Friends who still live in San Francisco tell me that they feel at risk whenever they venture outside.

Who is at fault and who has the power to do anything? The blame game is fun when we really haven’t got a clue about what to do, but really, does that do anything to even begin to alleviate the dire situation? No.

Wes ‘Scoop’ Nisker said,“If you don't like the news, go out and make some of your own.”

I am confident that San Francisco can create a vision that will save its soul. The situation seems extreme, but not insurmountable. It seems to me that the missing piece is a vision of what is possible.

Dianetics paves the way for Rasputin

An old friend from Naranjo's first Seekers After Truth group asked if I would be interested in joining her for a “spiritual event.” She gave me no real information about the evening other than it was being organized by a woman whom my friend had met in Scientology, and there was an obligation of friendship. 

I also had an obligation of friendship though it would be tested, and it turns out, for much longer than this brief evening in an extremely ordinary American suburb temporarily transported into the intrigue of late Imperial Russia. My SAT friend had responded to Naranjo’s call--I think he might describe it as a suggestion but certainly not a command--to sneak into Scientology and steal their technology. She had been trained as an auditor and reached a rather high level which took an enormous amount of time and energy. Subsequently she quit the official church and worked with a group of renegade Scientologists. Others who responded to the challenge were not as fortunate. Even in the 70’s joining Scientology was not akin to joining your local Methodist Church to give your kids a groundwork in the Judeo-Christian tradition that is the backbone of democracy. It was an insidious cult. In retrospect Naranjo’s cavalier attitude was unethical and shared the distinct smell of cult practice.

I followed many of Naranjo’s suggestions as if part of the shock troops of an esoteric army aimed at recovering the secret practices that would lead to our liberation. I completed the communications course at the Berkeley Mission of the Church of Scientology, something I later learned was akin to a franchise, started by some people who had reached a certain level “going clear.” When I asked about Scientology’s attitude towards being gay, I was told that if I fully understood that the true purpose of life was survival, I would see that I had to procreate and a bit of auditing would clear up any same sex attraction that was lingering in my bank. I said thank you very much but I would not be coming back for any more classes or auditing..

I remember my exit interview quite well. I had to visit the Ethics Officer. I was told that they wanted to make sure that I had no “withholds” regarding my treatment in the Mission. I said no to whatever questions were asked and apparently my needle was floating although I remember being angry with the arrogance.  

 

The Scientologist who was hosting the gathering was a Chinese American woman who lived in the hilly suburb of El Cerrito. It was just before dusk when we began looking for parking between the driveways of the well ordered ordinary middle class track homes. Most of the neighbors were already home from work so it took some time. Eventually we found our way into a large two car garage, complete with monochrome storage boxes neatly arranged on racks above our heads. My memory tells me that there were perhaps 50 people sitting on the folding chairs, but my rational mind can’t squeeze more than 35 into the space, perhaps less. There was a slightly raised platform where the speaker sat. He was introduced by our hostess. 

After he told us his name, some history of a spiritual lineage, he said that he was going into a semi-trance, and the spirit of Rasputin would be speaking through him. Yes, Rasputin, the wild philandering drunk monk who played a significant role in the downfall and death of the Romanov dynasty during the Bolshevik Revolution. I admit that my interest was peaked. I wondered if I could ask a question of the sex life of the young princesses who would meet a grizzly fate, but almost anticipating my perverse interest, he said that he, Rasputin, would not entertain questions, but if we paid attention and held a question in our hearts, we would find our answer.

Our medium had been a used car salesman who found his way to Dianetics. Apparently a bit of clearing opened the way for him to channel the Russian mystic gone rogue who could now proffer valuable advice so that we would not repeat his tragic mistakes. I found no answers but maybe I didn’t have any good questions except where did our semi-trance medium pick up the Russian accent. It was pretty hilarious. He did more than a full hour sounding like a drunk Boris Yeltsin. 

I held my tongue, paid the requested donation of 5 bucks, it might have been as high as 10, and left rather unenlightened other than knowing that finding parking in the El Cerrito hills after 6 PM was not a piece of cake. I think I turned to my friend and said, well that was something. I don’t know what the financial arrangement was between the host and the medium, but the take could have been anywhere for 350 to 500 dollars, or more--in 1990 dollars. Not bad for a few hours, better than hanging out on an asphalt parking lot trying to sell beat up Toyotas. 

Although I tried for many years to keep our friendship alive, this woman from SAT’s early days decided that she would not tolerate anything negative I wrote about our early work with Naranjo and cut off all communication. My obligation of friendship is that I remove her name or any identifying characteristics. If the work we did cannot stand the scrutiny of honest examination, we deny any inherent value in self-exploration. I will do anything to prevent someone from setting foot inside any Mission of the Church of Scientology although I am sure that the truth-speaking ghost of Rasputin is available for consultation. His rates have undoubtedly increased. It was more than 30 years ago.

All the particulars of these events actually happened. What in the name of God were we thinking?

Go Ahead, Shame me!

I remember a heated discussion with a guy whom I admired for his wit and creativity. He made his money being a DJ in a gay club, but he'd honed his skills and made an extremely respectable living. I am unsure of what he’d done to get educated, but he was obviously bright and could put a sentence together. In a public discussion he bemoaned his slight understanding of Numerology which would have obviously pointed to the correct decision. I probably--no assuredly--said something derogatory about relying on Assyrian soothsaying to arrive at a rational conclusion, and he angrily accused me of “Number shaming.” These were the heady days of politically correct lingo when you couldn’t call a fat drag queen fat, even if she called herself Fat Fanny, but what I remember most was his indignant anger that I called into question magical numbers as a way to truth.

One of the early proponents of the Hoffman Quadrinity Process was the Psychic Lady Sonia Choquette. She would apparently go into a trance state, connect with her guides on the supernatural plane, and give you advice. I checked her website and she is still selling--for $1200 she will give you an hour session over the phone. (I didn't make the mistake of adding a zero. That is more than the price of an Air France round trip ticket from San Francisco to Paris). No one is going to believe me if I warn them that they’re being scalped, but I was more interested in something that I saw in one of Choquette’s early online bio’s. What does someone say about his or her credentials for the Mystic Arts? Choquette claimed that she studied at the Sorbonne. I couldn’t stop laughing. I went and checked to see if there was even a course or two on comparative mysticism in the curriculum. Nothing. Maybe she'd been taking basic French and was tripping out in the back row rather than paying attention to the proper use of the ellipsis. Either that or she concocted the verification of her abilities from one of the most respected Universities in Europe,

Bob Hoffman originally called his Process, The Fisher-Hoffman Process of Psychic therapy. There it is right in the name.  A psychic is a person who claims to use extrasensory perception to identify information hidden from the normal senses, particularly involving telepathy or clairvoyance, or who performs acts that are apparently inexplicable by natural laws, such as psychokinesis or teleportation. 

If you knew Hoffman, trusting him for information that is normally hidden is a stretch of the imagination. Probably the only way to accept it is to say “apparently inexplicable by natural laws.” Or you can trust professional psychotherapy. 

Apparently the Hoffman Institute agrees with me. They have completely removed any mention of Hoffman's psychic abilities. I think that the narrative is to portray Hoffman as a kindly Jewish grandfather. “Gifted Intuitive” is substituted for psychic, 

Ms. Choquette now calls herself a “six-sensory consultant” whatever that means. Go ahead accuse me of “psychic shaming.” Is Fat Fanny going to punch me out? At least she was being honest.