I would never have believed it when I was younger. I think back then all that mattered to me was sex. Now when I make reference to virility and passion, it seems like something from a dream or another life.
Why trade in your youth? Why give up on the dream of eternal sexual conquests? Well to be honest - one could argue that the dream gave up on me. But seriously, the question of whether there is a point to all things or any things is fundamental here. Is all there is to life being young and stupid? I don't believe it and the reason is that when I was youthful and virile and handsome I always had these older years fixed in the corner of my eye.
I wanted to be something great. That didn't mean conforming to the system and having people recognize me as important. Having a healthy hatred of large groups of people comes in very handy at times. In this case, I thought that my contemporaries - the sex-crazed, mindless hordes that I would meet in seemingly endless clubs and parties - were complete imbeciles. Yes, I wanted to have sex with as many women as possible but at what cost? My soul? My dreams? No, a trip to Brazil when I was young unfortunately demonstrated that it was indeed possible to regiment even this aspect of my life.
The point is that most of the things people chase after are complete wastes of time. So what really matters? For me at least, there was nothing better than being able to transport my soul through time and space through ideas in great books. When I watch my son play video games, I get a glimpse of that experience - albeit as an utterly banal and useless copy.
I don't think most people 'get' the sacred experience of words. Great books like the Pentateuch, are worlds in themselves. What they appear to describe are almost worthless shells.
Is the Pentateuch simply the narrative of a historical event that supposedly happened three thousand years ago? European minds get caught up in this understanding - the banality of sacred literature. Moses was intended to be at once a historical figure from the past and a future redeemer. There is no question about this. This is what the author (presumably Ezra) had in mind when he was writing his narrative. He was looking both forward and back - and probably, in ways we will never fully comprehend, to circumstances of his own age. This is how writers operate.
While Europeans criticize Jews for 'reading too much' into their literature, it becomes particularly intolerable when those people are Christians. For there is nothing particularly sacred about the Pentateuch outside of the interpretation of the text. In other words, on its own it's just another bit of pseudepigrapha. This is undeniable. Yet it is in the interpretation of the text that the soul of the Jewish and Samaritan people are to discovered. This is what we do. Even if we aren't religious it should come as no surprise that the field of psychology was principally developed by Jewish people. We are an analytic culture.
And this is the very point. Instead of focusing entirely upon the ass of a woman, the person of developed religious sensibility - in theory at least - catches glimpses of himself watching the ass of a woman. This is why Jews are such bad dancers. Always thinking, always aware.
As I said, the establishment of words on a page as a mirror of reality serve to divert attention away from the lure of the physical world. If experience can be transformed into thought, then thought not only takes on a life of its own but it begins to eclipse the importance of experience. How many times do I have to fuck a harlot before I become aware of the experience of fucking a harlot? For some people there is a constant need for a 'refresher course,' to experience over and over again the dasein of physicality. I've known many people like this over the years.
So if you cut the direct experience of carnality out of your life, what are you left with? Some would say, marriage. Yes, that is certainly true in some respects. But I think more than that you have an opportunity to free yourself from the foolishness of youth.
It is at about forty - the flourishing of your life according to the classical model - that death changes from being an abstract concept that might arise as a consequence of your schemes backfiring, into the oppressive inevitability that it really is. What is the point of it all? The answer has to be the abandonment of youthful folly because the folly of youth is leaving you anyway whether you like it or not. And if foolishness is going away, surely the point of getting older is the acquiring of wisdom. Yes to be certain philosophical enlightenment will never have the tumult of a surprisingly well executed blow job, nevertheless its superiority is under reported in our popular culture.
There is something to be said for the sweetness of serenity. Wisdom establishes all things in order. I've never met a thrilling woman who wasn't utterly unpredictable. Not being able to predict what you are going to get makes receiving gifts all the more rewarding. Yet with sexually charged women the peaks of pleasure stand like isolated islands in oceans of tumult and the bottom line is that all this confusion gets in the way of thinking.
The way I learned to control the effect women had on me is to concentrate on the flaws in their physical appearance. The difficulty of course was when I met absolutely flawless women. But then I would just imagine them old.
And what are we left with now that we are old? This amazing revelation that Jesus was not a historical person. This is obvious from the evidence of the Marcionites and other early Christians. But 'mythicists' - i.e. the atheists who deny the historical Jesus to attack Christianity - fail to recognize that 'Jesus' (Ἰησοῦς) can't be the name of an angel. This didn't happen in antiquity. Angels and men did not share names.
Yet I think I have found the manner in which ישו fits right within the mystical tradition of Judaism. Europeans are always going to cling to their historical Jesus - even if it is only to beat him over the head as a fictitious creation. The truth however is to be found in the name ישו. It isn't only Jews who called him by this name. This is the name used in the Syriac churches. Yeshu is not a diminutive or shortening of ישוע. Have people forgotten that ישוע is already a shortened form of יהושע?
The secret of all secrets is breaking down this term ישו as a Hebrew or Aramaic word. But who among the New Testament scholars has this ability? It is a matter of seeing what is there and what is no longer there in order to crack this two thousand year old mystery. I have been trying to make the journey as enjoyable as possible ...
