Deep Calls to Deep: Reading Together

James and I recorded this one in a parking garage for irreducibly ambiguous counter-reasons. All of the expected distractions of the parking garage environment were intended to illustrate the unintentional negativity necessary for a loving encounter with the Other. As two long term sober dudes, we're always looking for new Deleuzian "Lines of Flight" from the toxic positivity of the sort of self-optimization that our drinking used to protect us from. We would like to continue to actively ruin our lives and our time for the mechanisms of capitalistic capture by becoming "imperceptible," even to ourselves, and therefore as non-transactable yet productive as possible. Join us for a truly worthless conversation about the negativity of love, or the "Agony of Eros," as Byung-Chul Han put it. Whatever you're able to discern of the conversation over the noise of the cars passing by and the intense wind storm raging all around us in central Ohio's weirdly, windy clime, will certainly whet your whistle for the suffering gifted to true lovers by eros, not so much in the banal and idiotically positive vein of the Marquis de Sade, but rather in that of the erotic suffering of the negative excess of Georges Bataille "Accursed Share."Intention without intention

Shawn and I discuss Siddhartha by Herman Hesse, and its relation to his recovery. Hesse has served as an introduction of Eastern thought to Westerners for over a century now. Hesse has been criticized by some of getting Buddhism wrong, or of "cultural appropriation" in general, or of being too individualistic and naive in his depiction of the spiritual journey as a solipsistic retreat into the balance and harmony of nature from the fallen, hectic world of family and work. While all those accusations may be valid to some degree or another, there is still much that recommends Hesse's version of authenticity or of Jungian "Individuation." Shawn recounts how the text helped him to come to certain essential realizations as he walked the paths of both decadence and recovery. It may be that JD Salinger and other Western authenticity hounds misused Hesse's thought to separate the world into the real ones and the phonies, but Hesse himself doesn't make any such facile categorizations. Shawn demonstrates how Hesse's thought can be understood as a sort of unification of opposites that neither resolves one into the the other nor becomes the sort of whole that Hesse and the great thinker of wholeness Karl Jung were both accused of. Hesse's whole is the wholeness that includes what can't be whole, something like Jung's individuation through the integration of the shadow, and it is this creative contradiction at the center of Hesse's work that still makes reading him worthwhile.Intention without intention

Char and I cross over from our normally audio-only Desire of Horror Podcast to produce this Youtube video. https://www.buzzsprout.com/2509184/episodes/19031864 https://youtu.be/XR8TvC5gfsoWe discuss the book Horrorstor by Grady Hendrix. The book provides a somewhat obvious but nonetheless useful capitalist critique around the concepts of the Professional Managerial Class or corporate speak; Consumer Culture, especially influencer advertisement techniques; and the toxic positivity of constant "self-maximization." An Ikea-like furniture store is built on the past site of a particularly ignominious prison, and the spirit of its warden and his prisoners emerge from within the vast, deliberately disorientating halls of the "Orsk" furniture store to haunt its circulating corridors, which are already haunted by the gaze of capital and consumption. The former prison was one of Jeremy Bentham's infamous "Panopticons." A Panopticon was a prison designed to require minimal guards because the prisoners always had the sense that they were being watched by the guards who were placed in a watch tower in the middle of the prison complex, so that they were able to see the maximal number of cells from their vantage point. The Panopticon serves as a fruitful metaphor throughout the novel as the horror of the ineluctable, internalized gaze of the Lacanian "Big Other," which for horror fans is something like the incubus always speaking from inside of the possessed's head.Intention without intention

Doug and I discuss Nothing to Grasp by Joan Tollifson. Doug's spiritual journey has been one of continual exploration through his life and in his recovery itinerary. He has recently been getting deeply into nonduality in addition to his Christian practice. Our conversation about Tollifson's recovery sojourn and nondual practice allow us to discuss Doug's insights into being fully present now wherever we find ourself on the path.https://youtu.be/eP3FMtZq15MIntention without intention

Dom and I get into the first two figures of the Book High Weirdness by Eric Davis, the McKenna Brothers, Terence and Denis. There is on the one hand, the scientific desire for certainty, which we associate with third-person, "objective" verifiability. This sort of inquiry and knowing is inline with what modern neurobiology imagines as the evolutionary design of the brain as a "prediction machine." If we are prediction machines, inquiry is for the reduction of uncertainty in order that we might be able to manipulate and control our environment better to our advantage. However, there is on the other hand, the religious desire to encounter the "Other," or that which we cannot reduce to the categories of scientific understanding and which cannot be reduced to a mere projection of our own intention either. The McKenna brothers encapsulate these two competing, perhaps, contradictory drives to make familiar and / or to encounter what is truly other.https://youtu.be/6jYvnYv9C7wIntention without intention

Dom and I discuss High Weirdness by Eric Davis in relation to spiritual experience in general but also to Dom's personal experiences as a psychonaut before getting sober. We are interested in exploring the relation of psychedelic experience to the process of recovery. Of particular interest is the irreducible ambiguity, or weirdness, of psychedelic experience that can either be a nightmare or the ecstasy of release from habitual modes of thinking and being in the world. Infamously, Bill W., the founder of AA was a part of an early research project with LSD to "cure" alcoholics of their "obsession" with alcohol. Does the weirdness of the psychedelic trip have the potential to break one out of addiction's habitual binding, or is it just another form of "low-level" spiritual seeking that contains limiting bindings of its own?https://youtu.be/HpIwJiy_zAwIntention without intention

Patrick and I discuss My War Gone By, I Miss It So by Anthony Loyd in relation to our journey's into sobriety and our mutual ADHD diagnoses. War was a sort of fantasy projection as well as a proving ground for Anthony Loyd, but what he proved to himself and shows to the reader is that almost nothing that is imagined or said about it is true, especially what he was led to believe about war and glory as it was depicted in the stories of his own military family's history. Patrick chose this book because it reflects struggles common to those attempting sobriety. In particular, recovery is a struggle to uncovered one's fantasy projections and to learn how to live without addictions that once helped to cover-over pain for which there where no other strategies at the time.https://youtu.be/_Gn2l13UMzQIntention without intention

Warning: This discussion contains reference to severe depression, suicidal ideation, self-harm, and addiction. Tom and I wrap up our three part discussion about William Styron's Darkness Visible. We really get into some of the complexities of having a dual diagnosis, specifically both addiction and depression, and how any underlying conditions of addiction come on stronger than ever after self-medicating with alcohol, and / or one's drug(s) of choice, stops.https://youtu.be/wqxZgj4b4msIntention without intention

Warning: we discuss severe depression, suicidal ideation, addiction, and self-harm. In this episode Tom and I discuss Darkness Visible by William Styron. We focus on Tom's experience with severe depression in recovery and Styron's considerations of Albert Camus's Myth of Sisyphus.https://youtu.be/6qu4dmUZDxcIntention without intention

Warning: We discuss severe depression, suicidal ideation, and addiction. In this video Tom and I discuss Darkness Visible by William Styron. We relate Tom's struggle with severe depression in recovery to Styron's telling of his extremely difficult circumstances. We especially focus on mystical treatments of the "Dark Night of the Soul" as either a helpful or a dangerous framing of severe depressive states.https://youtu.be/Eax1Oho-jKYIntention without intention

James and I have been fast friends every since we met a couple of years ago. He's the one who talked me into making some of my work public. This podcast is certainly a part of that general move to sharing some of what I study with my fellow citizens. James doesn't like or listen to podcasts. I love them, especially one's about books, like this one. If I send a podcast to him, he probably won't listen to it. And if he does, he'll slow it down to 66 percent, or some BS, and use it to go to sleep. I'm not sure if he thinks their gosh or self-indulgence or just boring. He might listen to this one, but I'm not sure. Convincing him to do this with me was a kind of loving compromise on James's part. We both love books and reading them together. James made a momentous decision recently that's he'd stop being "precious" about the projects that he involved himself in, he's said "no" to some pretty big names, and so we have embarked on this journey together into books!Our first book is an outgrowth of James's book club, of which I'm an original member in good standing. James and I have started many clubs together, adventure club, movie club (possibly defunct), dream club, game club, demonology club, and some others that I'm not remembering right now, but James is the founder and ultimate boss of book club. Piranesi has many of the themes that most interest me: esoteric religious practices, weird alternate worlds, mental disorders, and labyrinths. James didn't love the book, but he kindly brings his keen literary insights to it anyways. Please, enjoy this book talk.James is also responsible for the cool vibes at the beginning and end of all my podcasts. jamesreeves.coIntention without intention

In this video, we conclude our discussion of the introduction to Brook Ziporyn's book, focusing on the concept of "Atheism as Uberpiety." We contrast traditional religious experiences—which attempts to reduce uncertainty by providing cohesive rules and a stable identity—with a more profound, "decentering" religious experience that embraces ambiguity and radical paradigm shifts. We argue that rigid monotheism is stifling because it enforces a single, absolute truth and strict moral categories, thereby preventing individuals from experiencing the richness of multiple, open-ended possibilities. Instead, we suggest that authentic "ecstatic" religious experiences occur when we step outside of our conditioned programming and rigid identities.Intention without intention

Scott and Marty discuss and ultimately reject the philosophical thesis that monotheism was a "necessary stage" in the transition from ancient religiosity to modern secularism, arguing instead—via Brook Ziporyn—that Chinese religions like Daoism and Buddhism achieved concepts of "no-self" and "purposelessness" without ever positing a unified divine intention. They trace the Western history of "demythologizing" the world, describing how the survival instinct to project agency onto nature (animism) evolved into the depersonalized "unmoved mover" of Greek philosophy and the "omni-God" of Israel, before finally being internalized by Kant as the "synthetic a priori" structures of human consciousness. The speakers contend that while this trajectory led to secular humanism, it retained the dangerous flaw of believing in a "single purposeful mind"—whether divine or scientific—which allows for the violent enforcement of a "unified good". Contrasting this with the psychoanalytic reality that human minds are inherently conflicted and ambivalent, they conclude that authentic religious experience lies not in control or purpose, but in embracing "irreducible ambiguity" and the "intentionless void" of the sublimeIntention without intention

We cover the second two sections of the introduction of Brook Ziporyn's book Experiments in Mystical Atheism, "Preaching to the Choir" and "Let's Assume a Brain Tumor." You can also watch our conversation on YouTube at Adventures in Mystical Atheism: https://www.youtube.com/@ske313/podcastsScott and Marty discuss the limitations of the "symbolic"—the rules, language, and culture used to navigate the world—arguing that it cannot fully contain the "irreducible ambiguity" of reality, which drives humans to seek a "meta-language" or "Big Other" to guarantee coherence and truth. While modern society often elevates scientific discourse to this role, the speakers use the debate regarding transgender identities to demonstrate that science alone cannot resolve questions rooted in deep, extra-rational values. They critique the "New Atheists" (specifically Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, and Christopher Hitchens) for employing material reductionism and secular humanism as totalizing narratives that attempt to eliminate mystery—such as reducing behavior to genetic survival or meditation to economic productivity—rather than acknowledging the "abyss" of meaning. Drawing on the work of Ziporyn, the discussion concludes by advocating for "inter-subsumption," a state where conflicting perspectives like science and religion coexist without one blotting out the other, allowing individuals to hold intentions loosely and accept the lack of a single, all-encompassing identity.Intention without intention

We cover the first two sections of introduction of Brook Ziporyn's book Experiments in Mystical Atheism, "The Weird Idea" and "God as Default?". You can also watch our conversation on YouTube at Adventures in Mystical Atheism: https://www.youtube.com/@ske313/podcastsScott and I have been on a journey together for a long time. We met as undergraduates at Indiana University in 1991. We bonded around a love of philosophy and music. Over the past thirty-five years there have been countless late night conversations and warehouse parties (not so great for philosophical conversations), especially at those venues related to the underground Chicago House and Detroit Techno scenes. There have been three culminating events recently out of which this podcast was born: the 2025 Lack Conference, seeing Godspeed You! Black Emperor in a Detroit warehouse, and Brook Ziporyn's book Experiments in Mystical Atheism. The picture that we're using as the podcast's art is of us getting ready to listen to Slavoj Zizek give the keynote at the 2025 Lack Conference, where at 52 I finally presented my first academic paper, which was on the connection between Jacques Lacan's "Real" and Jean-Luc Marion's "Saturated Phenomenon." The second event occurred early this Fall when I went up to Detroit to see Godspeed with my partner Charla and my friends James and Candy. Pulling into a ghostly, but now legal, massive warehouse complex "somewhere in Detroit," as the Underground Resistance puts it, brought back so much of Scott's and my history together in the holy temples comprised of dark remnants of the post-industrial collapse of our esoteric, midwestern lives. And Godspeed'salchemical drones and refractory repetitions accomplished for Scott and me the religious ecstasy that this music is designed to produce, without the assistance of any other mind altering substances. As Genesis P-Orridge put it, "music is psychedelic all by itself." Our bodies are indeed "temples," designed to receive, without the containment of an intention, the sacred vibrations of Marion's "Elsewhere," and of Giles Deleuze's "deterritorialized flows of intensities." Scott and I were at Church, and we knew it, the one true, holy, catholic, and apostolic Church. I wept for most of the show and raised my hands and shouted "glory" and "hallelujah" to whatever it is that Meister Eckhart called the "God beyond God," which is what Scott and I call "love," and what Marion calls the love that precedes God as the "God Beyond Being." The third event was the discovery of Brook Ziporyn's book a few months ago, which has helped us to frame our journey together into a religious practice that is without the intention of a totalizing intention. Ziporyn's presentation of the Daoist concept of "Wu Wei" as "purposeless action" has given us new concepts for a journey that isn't without purpose, or concepts, but without the sort of absolute purpose, or intention, that Western notions of God insist on. Ziporyn's aphorism "No God, but many gods," captures perfectly our unwillingness to throw out the sacred along with the Omni-God. We were born of the unconditioned, unintentional love that proceeded being's intentions, and our holy intention is for the purposeless inclusivity of this groundless ground of love. Join us on our journey into the super-saturated darkness of love. Intention without intention

We've updated our introduction to the preface of the book to make it shorter and clearer. You can also see this episode on YouTube at Adventures in Mystical Atheism: https://www.youtube.com/@ske313/podcastsScott and I have been on a journey together for a long time. We met as undergraduates at Indiana University in 1991. We bonded around a love of philosophy and music. Over the past thirty-five years there have been countless late night conversations and warehouse parties (not so great for philosophical conversations), especially at those venues related to the underground Chicago House and Detroit Techno scenes. There have been three culminating events recently out of which this podcast was born: the 2025 Lack Conference, seeing Godspeed You! Black Emperor in a Detroit warehouse, and Brook Ziporyn's book Experiments in Mystical Atheism. The picture that we're using as the podcast's art is of us getting ready to listen to Slavoj Zizek give the keynote at the 2025 Lack Conference, where at 52 I finally presented my first academic paper, which was on the connection between Jacques Lacan's "Real" and Jean-Luc Marion's "Saturated Phenomenon." The second event occurred early this Fall when I went up to Detroit to see Godspeed with my partner Charla and my friends James and Candy. Pulling into a ghostly, but now legal, massive warehouse complex "somewhere in Detroit," as the Underground Resistance puts it, brought back so much of Scott's and my history together in the holy temples comprised of dark remnants of the post-industrial collapse of our esoteric, midwestern lives. And Godspeed'salchemical drones and refractory repetitions accomplished for Scott and me the religious ecstasy that this music is designed to produce, without the assistance of any other mind altering substances. As Genesis P-Orridge put it, "music is psychedelic all by itself." Our bodies are indeed "temples," designed to receive, without the containment of an intention, the sacred vibrations of Marion's "Elsewhere," and of Giles Deleuze's "deterritorialized flows of intensities." Scott and I were at Church, and we knew it, the one true, holy, catholic, and apostolic Church. I wept for most of the show and raised my hands and shouted "glory" and "hallelujah" to whatever it is that Meister Eckhart called the "God beyond God," which is what Scott and I call "love," and what Marion calls the love that precedes God as the "God Beyond Being." The third event was the discovery of Brook Ziporyn's book a few months ago, which has helped us to frame our journey together into a religious practice that is without the intention of a totalizing intention. Ziporyn's presentation of the Daoist concept of "Wu Wei" as "purposeless action" has given us new concepts for a journey that isn't without purpose, or concepts, but without the sort of absolute purpose, or intention, that Western notions of God insist on. Ziporyn's aphorism "No God, but many gods," captures perfectly our unwillingness to throw out the sacred along with the Omni-God. We were born of the unconditioned, unintentional love that proceeded being's intentions, and our holy intention is for the purposeless inclusivity of this groundless ground of love. Join us on our journey into the super-saturated darkness of love. Intention without intention