The Archetypal Patriarchal Drama of Grandiosity an Essential
Characteristic of Patriarchal Existence
Rudolph Bauer Ph.D. Diplomate in Clinical Psychology, A.B.P.P.
Washington Center for Consciousness Studies and The Washington center for Phenomenological and Existential Psychotherapy Studies
The Distorted and Distorting Aspiration of Omnipotence and Omniscience is Grandiosity. Grandiosity is an intrinsic quality of Patriarchal Omnipotence. Self-Realization and Self- Liberation is not the experience of becoming omniscient or omnipotent as many philosophical and meditation traditions of both the East and the West like to think, or pretend to think. As if human self -liberation or human self-realization is the result of becoming Omniscient and Omnipotent! As if self-liberation is becoming the One who knows Absolutely. As Hegel in his dramatic The Phenomenology of Spirit describes this aspiration of Knowing Absolutely is the beginning, the endless beginning of the Master Slave relationship. Being the One who knows Absolutely is simply another form of Human Grandiosity. Being the One who knows Absolutely is simply another form of Human Domination.
The desire for Omniscience and Omnipotence is an ever present distorted and distorting human desire reflecting human Grandiosity. The Primitive Illusions of Patriarchal Symbolic aspiration of Absolute Knowledge and Absolute domination is pervasive in both eastern and western meditative traditions. This primitive aspiration of Grandiosity preoccupies many religious Institutions and spiritual traditions and meditative traditions.
Omnipotent institutions or omnipotent meditative traditions are often structured in a descending framing of Grandiosity. The archetypal Head is the “super” Grandiose Patriarchal One who knows Absolutely and manifests Absolute domination. Then as the hierarchy descends, the power of omnipotence and the power of domination weakens and weakens until there is the bottom of the Grandiose Totem Pole.
Grandiosity is a distorting and distorted state of human inner infantile omnipotence and existential Beingless impotence. Grandiosity is a distorted aspiration reflecting infantile experience and the existential fixation of omnipotence. Grandiosity destroys Equal vision and Equality consciousness. Grandiosity destroys the Bliss of the Ordinary. Grandiosity is fixated on Specialness and on Narcissistic Greatness and the infantile sense of Specialness and infantile illusion of Superiority. Grandiosity is an imaginary experience.
Ontological Lack
As the French psychoanalyst Jacque Lacan suggest Grandiosity is a compensatory experience reflecting Ontological Lack. Grandiosity is a compensatory experience for our profound sense of Being-lessness and the emptiness of Being-lessness. Grandiosity is a Narcissistic self-absorbed preoccupation of Specialness and Exceptionalness and reflects the profound absence of Equal Vision and Equality Consciousness. Grandiosity does not experience the sameness of Being. Grandiosity does not experience the oneness of Being. The medieval theologian Dun Scotus called this oneness and sameness of Being Una Vocity.
Grandiosity easy falls into hopelessness, and emptiness, and being-lessness. In the ordinary life world grandiosity often reflects the unfolding of the dynamic Hero / Zero Experiential Drama. This is the drama of soaring, soaring, soaring and then falling, falling, falling. In archetypal language this is the myth of Icarus!
The Bliss of the Ordinary is the Bliss of Self Liberation
In the Bliss of the Ordinary there is no above and no below, there is no better and there is no best. There is no judgmental truth and there is no judgmental falsity. There is no absolute good and there is no absolute evil. There is no absolute hierarchy. Grandiosity is preoccupied with being above, being right, being wrong, being better and being Best. Being above everyone and everything! Grandiosity destroys and obscures direct knowing and direct experience. Grandiosity obscures direct perception and obscures Gnosis, Jnana and Yeshe (Wisdom). Grandiosity distorts our experience of what is, what is actuality. Grandiosity distorts the Truth of Being-fullness. Grandiosity distorts the Bliss of the Ordinary.
Grandiosity becomes easily captivated in the Archetypal Judgmental Patriarchal Mind both within men and within women. Patriarchal Grandiose Judgmental-ness destroys and obscures our perception of phenomena and our perception of the felt sense of experience. Grandiosity obscures our perception of Being and Being-fullness. Grandiosity always and always suffers inflation and deflation, and this unfolding process of inflation and deflation happens moment by moment.
Grandiosity always requires total Loyalty and total Attention and total Subjugation. The Personification/Deification of Grandiosity can reflect the ever-present experience or ever-present understanding of God as the Patriarchal God, the Father. The Omniscient and Omnipotent Deus! The God of The Last Judgment. The God of Eternal Judgement!
Many religious and many spiritual traditions suffer from the endless distortion of Grandiosity and the endless distortion of Omnipotence. Many business corporations suffer from the very same distortions of Grandiosity and the very same distortion of Omnipotence. Many persons in family systems suffer from the distortion of Grandiosity and the distortion of Omnipotence.
The Master Slave Drama
As Hegel elaborates in his brilliant text Phenomenology of Spirit, Grandiosity invokes the Master Slave relationship. Grandiosity destroys Equality Consciousness and Being full Equal Vision. The One who “knows” Absolutely suffers from the distortion of Grandiosity and the distortion of Omnipotence.
Aspirations of Grandiosity are aspirations for feeling Being-fullness through personal domination and feeling Being-fullness through the reflection of godlike admiration and godlike devotion and of godlike Knowing and godlike domination. “ I know Everything” and I can do “Everything”
Ultimately, Grandiosity tragically invokes Being-lessness within the Grandiose Person. Grandiosity destroys the mutual devotion of Equality Consciousness and Equal Vision. In Grandiosity there is never enough. Grandiosity though seemingly Being-full is deeply and desperately and ultimately Being-lessness. This Being-lessness reflects profound innermost emptiness and profound innermost voidness. Being-lessness is Meaninglessness. The true power of Being-fullness is Equality Consciousness and the Equal Vision of the Being of beings.
Grandiosity is the compensatory experience for Being-lessness, Emptiness and Voidness. The root of Grandiosity is schizoid states of death like Emptiness, deathlike Being-lessness, and the profound absence of personal Who-ness, personal Being-fullness.
Grandiosity is a distortion of the truth of the Equality of Being. The truth of Grandiosity embodies Patriarchal Veritas. The Patriarchal Veritas is the concrete operational truth of right and wrong, good and evil, better and best, truth and falsity. The truth of Patriarchal Veritas is the truth of concrete operational judgmental-ness of our being located in our mind alone.
The truth of Patriarchal Veritas is locked in the truth of the Pairs of Opposites, the Pairs of existential polarities. The truth of Veritas is the Truth of Mind alone and reflects our judgement of the adequation of ‘intellectus et rei’. The adequation of our mind and the thing, is the judgement of the intellect about the thing and the thingness.
The discernment of our direct perception and the discernment of our luminous direct awareness is obscured by mentalistic judgment of the patriarchal superego, and the patriarchal superego is the endless source of locked in Concrete Judgmental-ness.
This mentalistic judgmental truth is absent in the Being full Truth of Alethea, the Truth of Being fullness in manifestation. The truth of Veritas is the truth that reflects the concrete operational patriarchal superego judgmental thinking about the nature of an experience. This experience is trapped in relentless bipolar oppositions within any phenomena, within any thingness, and within Beingness itself.
The structure of our Patriarchal Superego hides and obscures our power of direct knowing, the power of Gnosis, of Jnana and of Yeshe. The internalized structure of the internalized Patriarchal Critical Judgment obscures the clarity of perception of the Being of phenomena as well as the nature of phenomena.
The truth of Alethea is the truth of our self-revelation of Being-fullness. The truth of Alethea is the truth of Being-full Luminous Presence. The truth of Alethea is the truth of direct perception and direct knowingness of Being within our self and within others and within the world. The truth of Alethea is the truth of the medium of primordial awareness which integrates the pairs of existential opposites and inner oppositions.
The pairs of existential opposites parts can be integrated within this sphere of Alethea which is experienced within the Transitional Spacious Field of awareness which is the field of Being fullness. All phenomena and all persons have within them internalized parts of opposition. Sometimes these parts are states of mind, sometimes affective states, sometimes fixated opinions or values and sometimes they are deep states of the vast forces of Being.
The truth of Alethea integrates the pairs of Existential Opposites such as Right and Wrong, Good and Evil, Better and Best and Truth and Falsity. The truth of Alethea is the truth of the self -revelation of the Being fullness of our Being and the Being fullness of the world. The Truth of Veritas lacks Being fullness. The truth of Veritas lacks the direct experience of our field of awareness which is our field of Being fullness. The truth of Veritas is the truth of Concrete Thingness and the concrete thought of the concrete mind and concrete operational judgment. The truth of Alethea is the truth of perception of ‘what is’, without mentalistic judgment about what is.
Grandiosity is located within the Patriarchal Mind of Being- lessness yet appearing as the ONE WHO KNOWS ABSOLUTELY. Grandiosity is an attempt to overcome Being- lessness through the compensatory experience of Omnipotence and Omniscience. Grandiosity, in all forms, is ultimately the vast and endless experience of ontological emptiness and endless ontological Desperateness and ontological Voidness and pure hatred of those above them and hatred of those below them. There is envy of those above them and disdain for those below them. Racism is a form of endless cultural Grandiosity.
The Narcissistic Density of Grandiosity naturally invokes the Master Slave relationship. The Patriarchal drama of Grandiosity can take place in religious institutionalization and in corporate institutionalization and in our family field constellation. The Patriarchal drama of Grandiosity can dominate ever moment of our life and death. Imagine Being lost in Grandiosity at the moment of Death.
The Patriarchal Realm of death is considered the Realm of Great Patriarchal Judgmental-ness that is the last Judgement that declares forever and forever our eternal fate. Christians love this last judgement drama of God the Father as God the Judge. This grandiose delusion of omnipotence and omniscience is the perfect illusion of Patriarchal Grandiosity. The religious belief in the last judgment reflects the Perfection of the spectacular cruelty of the grandiose patriarchal cultural Superego. Our personal and cultural superego continuously reflects righteous as cruelty and torture. The best torture is of course, Divine Torture!
Theocratic and Symbolic Patriarchal Grandiosity judgmentally condemns people to the everlasting fire of hell forever and ever. Theocratic and Symbolic Patriarchal Grandiosity is spectacularly cruel. In Patriarchal Grandiosity one is either all good or all bad. Patriarchal Grandiosity is ontologically and psychologically a “borderline experience”. Existence and Being is ‘either or’. Grandiosity is tormented within by Ontological ambivalence and primitive splitting of fragmented “Parts” of our Person. Within Grandiosity there is always a subtle fragmentation, a fragmentation of our luminous Being fullness.
The religious practice of poverty, chastity and obedience are Patriarchal and Transcendental Aspirations. They are distortions of Being fullness. They are Beingless aspirations appearing as would be Being fullness. This does not mean that a person cannot experience chastity, or experience obedience or experience poverty in authenticity.
The Vow
It is the Patriarchal Vow in the Patriarchal Context that is the distortion. In the Patriarchal context the Vow being a symbolic action signifying symbolic allegiance and symbolic deference to a Patriarchal Institution or Patriarchal Person, or even, yes even a Patriarchal God. Such vows can become the very essence of the Master Slave Comedia of Merciful Cruelty!
The Vow is the Comedia of Power and Omnipotence of the Dominance Submission relationship. When the Vow is made to a Symbolic God, the Symbolic God can become the Master in the endless existential drama of the Patriarchal Master Slave relationship. Liberation through Slavery. Liberation through Obedience. Liberation through Submission. It is true that some are masters, and some are slaves. It is also true that some are neither Master nor Slave.
Self-Liberation
The Theocratic experience of the union of Royalty and Spirituality naturally manifests and sustains the Patriarchal Drama of Domination and Submission. Self -Liberation involves the metabolization and deconstruction of the Patriarchal Theocratic Function. The Patriarchal Theocratic function and structure obscures the profound Being full truth of Equality Consciousness and Equal Vision. As Jacque Lacan so elegantly suggest the Patriarchal Theocratic function reflects the internalized psychological Personal Superego as well as the Symbolic Function of the Patriarchal Archetype Symbolic Function.
The Lacanian Symbolic Drama of Patriarchal Grandiosity
Jacque Lacan the masterful French Symbolic psychoanalyst would often elaborate how grandiosity often lives within our unconscious Patriarchal Symbolic Realm and is unconsciously experienced within the narcissistic dimension of our person. Grandiosity strangely can be intimately personal.
Our experience of Patriarchal Domination can bring forth the Sado-Masochistic experience as Intimate and Profoundly Personal. This jouissance of profoundly suffering for the sake of sadistic -masochistic spiritual intimacy dominates both western and eastern spirituality and western and eastern religion. Suffering for God, to be with God, seems to be a path often described dramatically in both eastern and western mystic religious traditions.
Paradoxically, our aspirations of Patriarchal Grandiosity can destroy our sense of the personal in our self and in others. Patriarchal Grandiosity profoundly destroys our sense of the Equality of Being fullness in our sense of self and in our sense of self in others. When personal Being fullness collapses, what remains is the schizoid transactional experience of the Emptiness of Being lessness. Only the agony of the transactional Remains! Only the schizoid sense of meaningless being lessness remains.
Patriarchal Grandiosity destroys the sense of Equality Consciousness and Equality Vision with and within their Symbolic God of Judgement. The Symbolic God becomes the Patriarchal Absolute Judge of Veritas, right and wrong, good and evil, better and best and truth and falsity. In Patriarchialness there is never enough loyalty and never enough subjugation. Loyalty and subjugation are endless fixations in Grandiose Situations and Grandiose traditions and Grandiose Organizations and Grandiose Religions.
Christianity, Buddhism, Hinduism and Islamism all have their singular forms of the Grandiose-
Patriarchal Grandiosity destroys true Compassion and Grandiosity destroys Mercy. Patriarchal Grandiosity in its Omnipotent demandingness destroys humanness and destroys the Divinity of Appearance, and Destroys the Beatific Vision of Being fullness of human phenomena. Grandiosity obscures the truth of Being fullness. Grandiosity obscures the truth of Equality Consciousness and Equal Vision. Tribal Grandiosity is the eternal source of unending racism.
Patriarchal Grandiosity consumes the personal. Grandiosity consumes the Being lessness of human beings. Grandiosity destroys the personhood of human beings. Grandiosity invokes Being lessness in human beings. Grandiosity invokes the Master Slave relationship within human beings and between human beings. The Patriarchal position is a position of endless aspirations and endless disappointments.
Developmentally Grandiosity is a fixation at our early oral stage of human oral development. This is the stage of infantile omnipotence. As we know infantile omnipotence and infantile catastrophic vulnerability are within the same affective state of experience, and the same intertwined state of experience.
Developmentally Grandiosity is a fixation at our early experiential stage of our human experience of humanness and human oneness. This is the stage of our human infantile omnipotence. As we know our infantile omnipotence and infantile total catastrophic vulnerability are the same experiential configuration. The phenomenological experience of ongoing continuity of Being fullness within the early infantile states is simultaneously intertwined with the horrific experience of the deprivation of human connectedness.
The more we can metabolize these demanding states of experience the more we will feel self-liberated. The power of the field of awareness metabolizes and assimilates states of experience. The intense luminous field of Awareness, the intense field of Luminous Being fullness destroys and digest affective states of experience in the metabolization process of our embodied awareness field of Being fullness. Within the dissolution of frozen affective states what remains is more energy, and more light and more self-luminosity.
The Compelling Attraction of Grandiosity
Grandiosity is both compelling and repulsive. Grandiosity is compelling to another Grandiose Person. There is an attraction of the mutually compelling energy of narcissism. Grandiosity and Narcissism can be compellingly erotic. The energetic field of Grandiosity is compelling in its power of possessiveness and its power of domination.
Weakness and Emptiness and Being lessness are attracted to the illusionary Being fullness of Grandiosity. Weakness and Emptiness and Being lessness are compellingly attracted to the One Who Knows Absolutely and The One Who Dominates Absolutely.
Grandiosity within Patriarchialness pulls many weakened people into the grandiose patriarchal field. The grandiose patriarchal experience with its absolute authority pulls and compels concrete operational minds who are intrinsically dependent on authority of the One who knows absolutely.
To have the independent authority of one’s own awareness and one’s own experiential understanding is Beneficence. Many people are searching for dependency on the One Who knows Absolutely. There is this compelling innate intrinsic desire to find knowledge in the Other, in the Symbolic Other. The one Who knows Being fullness is ultimately our own innermost knowingness of awareness and our own felt sense of our experience of awareness.
Awareness is Being’s knowing of Being.
Right within us is the direct knowing of the field of Being. But since people are consistently and forever located in their own mind that knows only phenomena, they suffer loss of liberation just as they are. Within awareness, we as Being know Being and the Being fullness of Being within Phenomena.
Without innermost Being fullness, a person searches for Kings, they search for Saints, the search for God like figures who they wish to adore and to whom they submit to and hope to be liberated by and through submission. Some even search for Authoritarian Monsters. They search and fall into Sadistic- Masochistic relationships that are so compelling to Beingless human beings. They believe and they hope that surrender and domination offer self- liberation. They believe and hope that obedience and domination lead to self-liberation.
People search for luminous awareness in otherness. They search for participation in the omnipotence and grandiosity within the Patriarchal Drama, within the Patriarchal Person. They become lost within the consuming dependency of their concrete operational mind limited and bound in somatic concreteness with the ONE WHO KNOWS ABSOLUTELY.
This is the profound source of the powerful omnipotent success of many religious structures and religious institutions. The grandiosity of the institution is locked within the personal psychological structure of the superego demands and superego punishments.
Leadership
Leadership is a locus often of Patriarchal Grandiosity and various forms of the master slave relationship. Leadership can dominate the psyche with its patriarchal grandiose field of Being fullness. Leadership can easily be dominating, and the field of domination can organize Psyche in compelling and unconscious ways.
Grandiose Leadership can easily pull a person into the sadomasochistic compelling drama of domination and submission. Relationship is the emerging quality of energy and meaning. Energy and meaning are transmitted directly from one person to another in relational experience. Awareness as Consciousness will directly know and experience this symbolic somatic mystery of energy and meaning.
Equality Consciousness and Equal Vision
Of course, there are leaders and teachers who live within luminous awareness of equal vision and equality consciousness. There are leaders who live in and within the field of innate luminous awareness. Such leaders lead others into and within the field of awareness which is the field of Being fullness. Such Being full leaders not only experience the phenomena of the person, they experience the Being fullness of the person. Such leaders not only experience the phenomena of the institution but the experience the Being fullness of the institution. Some leaders not only experience the phenomena of cultural groups of people, but such leaders experience the Being full field of culture of people, the Being full phenomena of the people. Such leaders experience the Being fullness of culture and relate experientially within the Being full field of the culture.
There are leaders who have the power of manifestation of the field of Being fullness not only within individuals but within groups of people and some even within cultures. To experience the Being fullness of a situation, the Being fullness of a person, or the Being fullness of a culture is to be able to have a felt sense of the lived experience of the person, the lived experience of the situation and the lived experience of the culture. The leader is then able to self-manifest the field of their own Being fullness to a person, to a situation and to a culture.
This direct knowing, this direct experiencing, brings forth direct transmission from within the awareness field of the person who is the leader, into the person, into the situation and into the culture. As Bodhi Dharma said in the 6th century Beyond words and letters there is a transmission, this transmission does not belong to any culture, this transmission is the nature of human awareness.
Rudolph Bauer, Ph.D. Diplomate in Clinical Psychology, A.B.P.P.
The Washington Center for Consciousness Studies and the Washington Center for Phenomenological and Existential Psychotherapy.
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