why I am not a Hindoo

[Otto]

"But when, finally, advancing doubt made an end of God the
Creator, there was left in being no more than the mechanical
world-system which would never have been so crudely denuded
of spirit but for its previous degradation to the status of
creature."

               --Karl Jaspers, MAN IN THE MODERN AGE


Funny that you mention Jaspers who was born in my hometown.

On the quote: A simple turning of the opposites never does it.

> Also, replying to Otto's claim that P is an atheist, I would say,
> this is neither born out by the facts of his biography nor by his
> fiction and prose.

The known facts of his biography are just a few but the textual evidences
that you cannot put him in any ideological corner are many. But you are
right that he doesn't set the East above the West as the hippies did who
made the hesse-ian Morgenlandfahrt and became sannyasins.

I always appreciated the Eastern way of showing us a mirror of ourself like
that old man Bhagwan who collected cars like Breczhnew.

So in your point about narrow vs. open we absolutely agree. No need for this
opposition to deconstruct Christianity (or any other religion) and show its
genuine defects like William Slothrop does.

So "what is perceived as a matter of faith in" [one corner of the world] "is
perceived as fantasy" [in another corner] -- that's the way it goes and
Salman Rushdie is very good in telling about those absurdities of religious
intolerance.

Yes, and the great world religions are still confusing the minds of the
masses so we have to admit that the project of the Enlightenment was a
failure, at least up to now. Marxism as secular substitute of the religious
sphere went wrong
too. And of course one logocentric binary like yin-yang cannot be the way
out of another one like S&M.

> Isn't Freemasonry that includes the Transcendentalism, Lyle Bland? <

Yeah, that's the secret message behind all those conspiracy stories like
Wilson's Illuminatus!: that there might be a way to reach the mystical
sphere by technical means, through human sacrifices. By trying to create
Heaven on Earth by reason we just reach some kind of Hell.

Otto