6.6.4 Schopenhauer and The Caveman Buddhas 

Table of Contents for
 
World History 
And The Eonic Effect
Civilization, Darwinism, and Theories of Evolution
3rd. Edition
The Book
By  John Landon

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  6. TRANSITION AND MODERNITY  
     6.1 A NEW AGE BEGINS: FROM MICRO TO MACRO  
        6.1.1 Frontier Effects And The ‘European Miracle’  
     6.2 FROM REFORMATION TO REVOLUTION  
        6.2.1 Protestantism In The Eonic Mainline  
        6.2.2 Rhyme And Reason: Aesthetic Dynamics  
        6.2.3 1492: Postcolonial Reflections  
     6.3 AN AGE OF ENLIGHTENMENT  
        6.3.1 The Crisis Of The Enlightenment  
        6.3.2 Philosophy And Periodization: Kant’s Eerie Timing  
        6.3.3 Two Meanings Of Historicism  
        6.3.4 Outflanking Hegel  
    6.4 THE GREAT DIVIDE  
       6.4.1 Revolutions Per Second: The Discrete Freedom Sequence  
       6.4.2 Econostream != Eonic Sequence  
    6.5 SYSTEM SHUTDOWN: FROM MACRO TO MICRO  
       6.5.1 The Curse Of Mideonic Empire?  
ENDNOTES  
       6.6 NEW AGES  
          6.6.1 New Age Movements  
          6.6.2 Rogue Buddhas And Sufi Hyenas: A Challenge To Guruism  
         6.6.3 A Sufi Myth: Fourth Ways,…And The Great Freedom Sutra  
        6.6.4 Schopenhauer And The Caveman Buddhas  

 In the evolution of humans the emergence of the Buddha phenomenon remains one of its most enigmatic aspects, as it appears fully blown in the Indic stream (and elsewhere, often in disguise). Quite apart from the sheer inadequacy of Darwinian scientism to even describe this phenomenon, let alone confront its evolutionary emergence. Our model should not presume to simplistic explanations, but a close look shows us a number of clues. Although clearly specialized as an exploration of the limits of philosophy the classical German phase of philosophy in the Enlightenment shows us in the works of Schopenhauer how the connection between the discourse of Reason and the sutras of self-consciousness, as these arise in the phases of Indian Upanishadism, can easily be made.

The resemblance of Kantian critical thinking to the classic vein of discourse on ‘appearances’ (Maya) is brought out clearly by that remarkable successor to Kant, this in parallel to the work of Hegel, despite its seeming publicity several generations downfield. What is remarkable is that Schopenhauer appears just at the point that reverse diffusion globally injects the stream of Indic religious thought into the dramatics of modernism. And yet, as he insists, his intuitions appear just before the onset of the flood of this diffusion. He even tells us the secret behind this, as he refers to the One Thought behind his opus. Although we cannot easily divine the mysteries of mind in such an Romantic genius, the type par excellence, we can roughly intuit what he is driving at, and we can also see that his realization appears almost at one stroke, virtually reinventing ‘buddhism’ on the spot, and in isolation, and this in the most obvious connection to a general mainline of eonic emergence given powerful expression by a figures such as Rousseau and Kant.

This is a specialized philosophic endeavor, and may not reach quite the same result as the practical efforts of ancient yogis and their meditations and ascetic ractices, but in the end it is all of a piece. It is this field of eonic emergence that gives us the clue then. And as we look backward toward the vistas of deep time and the period of man’s earliest appearances, we can easily suspect, without the details, just how the Buddha phenomenon could arise suddenly in the deep Paleolithic and almost fully formed from the latent potential of human self-consciousness.