William Mazzarella, “Ecstatic Life and Social Form: The Mana of Mass Society”

Resonance: How the Other Side Thinks

Tonight, we will screen what I consider an impressive intellectual presentation of a new-old paradigm of anthropological dogma, in short, an elaborate argument for a materialist explanation of the phenomenon of resonance. This sociologist-anthropologist, William Mazzarella, is not some cheesy superficial thinker. He has integrated the theoretical underpinnings of anthropology with Lacanian psychoanalysis and Zizekian deconstruction of ideology, and he offers here a brilliant analysis of the phenomenon that he refers to as mana, a term that entered Western discourse via a classic anthropological study of Polynesian tribes. Mana (not the manna from heaven depicted in the Old Testament book of Exodus) is the equivalent of what we call shakti, and that yogis feel in meditative states of resonance with the Self.

Our speaker has re-considered this phenomenon from within the acceptable reality tunnel of mainstream psychoanalytically-informed academic discourse. The description of mana, as “a vital energetic force and moral power of collective effervescence,” was first reported and theorized in studies by the founding father of the anthros, Emile Durkheim, notably his book entitled Elementary Forms of Religious Life, followed by further studies by Malinowski, Mauss, Levi-Strauss, Bateson, Mead, and others. Lacan was in turn influenced by this line of thought.

But you will notice as you listen that there is no mention of other possible explanations that go beyond a materialist interpretation. Rupert Sheldrake’s research into the morphogenic field was not considered. Nor were the findings of any of the idealist philosophers who are currently adumbrating a very different paradigm, and basing their arguments on recent theoretical developments in such fields as quantum physics, information theory, phenomenology, and parapsychology.

Moreover, the comparison of mana with modern advertising and publicity, is questionable, to say the least. If any surprising factor exists in our current situation, it is the impotence of Western media to control the narrative or even hold on to their viewers. The credibility of the rants and rallying cries—the mana—of the ruling powers has drained away. In Daoist terms, the rulers have lost the mandate of heaven. If mana could be artificially produced, by mass hypnosis, for example, or emanated by human will alone, this would not be the case. The partial success and ultimate failure of the pandemic gambit to coerce the entire population to submit to the untested injections is a case in point. Power should be able to be extended forever by the puppet masters, if this sociological theory is correct. But the fact is that the hegemonic masters are at the end of their rope. Their charisma has faded, and they are helpless to restore it, even if one of them loudly declares he will make America great again. To understand this impasse faced by the deep state requires taking the transcendent nature of mana seriously as a measure not of inventive marketing but of divine grace.

The success of the cosmetics industry during the time of the writing of one study, probably in the 1950’s, which is here used as an example of applied mana, misses the point: those companies are no longer riding high. Advertising did not save them. The collective sense of the beautiful, the feminine, the seductive, has moved on to new inflections, and cannot be recaptured or even ridden like a wave, since sudden riptides of social schism can undermine or dox a brand or a celebrity spokesperson with immediate deflationary effect.

Our lecturer looks in all the wrong places for mana in current mass society. Hidden in plain sight is the obvious fact that mana can be found most easily in spiritual centers where people focus on living in resonance with the Supreme Being. But this possibility does not even arise in his imagination, as such centers do not wield the obvious levers of influence.

To his credit, Dr. Mazzarella does perceive art as a medium for the transmission of mana. This, too, is now questionable, of course, but historically both art and architecture aimed to open the public consciousness to the infinite—which alone can be the real source of mana-shakti. But modern and postmodern art installations and massive urban edifices are no longer producing the same effect of awe and wonderment. Even the superheroes of cinema have gone woke and broke and lost their mojo.

As to our speaker’s central concept, constitutive resonance, to which he gives an impressive genealogy, going back to Goethe, and the poetic notion of elective affinities, it includes profound experiences of human significance, but assumes that the resonance involved is only of horizontal dimensionality, not arising from a descending vertical axis of subtle energy that provides the motive and taste of vitality sourced at the wellspring of flowing prana, as depicted in such renowned religious icons as that of the mythical god Shiva, from the top of whose head flows the sacred water that descends and morphs into the holy River Ganga.

Dr. Mazzarella has a very refined and well-aged intelligence, but it does not seem like he has personally imperienced the reality of mana. Therefore, he can only theorize that social forces tend to augment each other with complementary horizons of intentionality and thus resonate mutually and support the flourishing of all concerned. He does not seem to grasp that such forces over time will become exhausted, corrupt, moribund, fractured by internal conflicts and incoherent projections.

Thus, to our speaker, contingency and overdetermination are solely responsible for historic shifts in consciousness and cultural forms. Science has replaced magic, at least in the public arena of macro-events. However, he concedes that magic still reigns in intersubjective relationships, but then he immediately applies that to marketing, which is obviously a subfield that can only become relevant after there is something new and valuable to market. But scientists, engineers, and inventors have often testifed to the effect that they received their new ideas from dreams, reverie states, meditative reflection, and moments of sudden revelation—not from deduction, inductive reasoning, laborious calculation, experimentation, or following old formulae and paradigms of the possible—even though a lot of hard work usually follows the instant of inspiration that precipitates the arrival of the new.

Mazzarella also notes that magic is essentially action at a distance—we would say it signifies qualium entanglement, morphogenic influence, and spiritual attunement—but he prefers to apply the notion to the subservient mass media, the superstitious gimmicks of televangelists, and controlled political loudmouths, without recognizing the prior presence of a resonant attunement to the Christ symbol that lends to the pastor the aura of legitimacy to heal and embolden his flock. But no minister can arbitrarily induce the power of faith. Does ritual create such faith, or is ritual simply the medium of remembrance of the inherent ground of consciousness in a pure state of Being, reachable again only via some well-directed rite of passage that brings about a conscious transubstantiation of identity?

The origin of constitutive resonance for this anthropologist is the fusion of particular signifiers with traces of jouissance. How that happens he does not know. But he does recognize that this saturation of special signifiers in language with the energy of joy that is connected to the Real occurs always simultaneously as an outer phenomenon and an inner psychic alteration. He denotes that occasion of perceived nonduality with the Lacanian concept of extimacy.

The true events of constitutive resonance are usually face-to-face encounters, through which higher energies can be transmitted and received. This, for example, is the significance of Darshan. But what is the source of those energies that overflow from the presence of authentic yogis, saints, sages, and prophets?

In the beginning is vital assembly, according to his new gospel. But, like the big bang theorist who never asks what was there before the singularity or how it got there, Mazzarella does not ask what draws those people together in the first place. How do they know they will be vitalized and empowered by a group convocation?

His theory, in line with the traditional Freudian doctrine, insists that the motive is always sexual, and that those primitive gatherings always ended up in collective orgies. This notion actually violates what is known of ancient rites ranging from the sacrificial fire rituals of the Vedic peoples, those of the early worshippers of Mazda, the Zoroastrian magi, as well as such famous Greek rites of passage as the Eleusinian Mysteries.

He assumes that the tribal totem functions as a fetish reminding members of the tribe of that long-past orgiastic occasion of disappearance of boundaries, which somehow affects even those of later generations who were not there and even without receiving an explanation of the sensual free-for-all that supposedly first energized it. This is straight-up Freud from his book entitled Totem and Taboo.

Mazzarella admits that the totem carries moral force for the tribe, signifying the highest possible level of Being. But by calling it a collective memory trace of sexual abandon, rather than a subjective event of pure spiritual absorption in the Power of God, he cannot adequately explain why a whole tribe would genuflect or prostrate themselves before such an idiosyncratic idol. But surely it is not because of some transgressive rave that took place in the distant past, even if that is also part of the mythological setting, but because of the Presence of that uncanny Power in this very moment.

He quotes another academic who calls the power of such symbols “an illusion with teeth in it.” But perhaps it would be more apt to refer to such an object, whether a cross or a Shiva lingam, as a sign of the Truth that its very appearance calls forth to those who can see the Real.

He does not distinguish moral solidarity from violent crowd contagion, or even desperate genocidal war, as if the latter would ever be valorized in a religious symbol. Patriotism dwells on the celebration of the sacrifices made in past wars as selfless acts of defending the Motherland, but the dark forces that were employed in that effort are carefully whitewashed in the official historic accounts.

The absence of mana in our current Western social order is explained as simply a result of its not yet having been invented, as if it still could be formulated by astute marketers at any moment. He recognizes that current society is fractured into myriad subcultures that do not resonate with one another, and thus mana has become fractalized in our time, as he puts it. But he does not seem to notice that it has also become depotentiated.

He posits the Durkheimian distinction between religion and magic as depending on the difference between public and private, and even more crucially, between permitted and prohibited. But the secret nature of authentic rites is not gratuitously transgressive, even in the Tantric sects, but their processes are hidden and disguised as transgressions to ward off the immature dabblers, because genuine transformation does require a high level of world-weary maturity, critical thinking, and a heightened capacity for symbolic connectivity with the Real. The magic is not in the ritual, but in the quality of the energy field created by the master of the spellbinding entrancement.

Contrary to the academic anthros, the power of the shaman does not come from public opinion. In fact, such ineffable power can be even greater when it is entirely hidden from the public. A secret shaman can be far more powerful, in fact, than a formal authorized representative of a religion or a school of magic (whether white or black, or both). The inherently esoteric nature of real magic and true religion is not understandable by those who have not opened and explored the realms of consciousness from which authentic magical and spiritual effects arise.

The anthros believe that the power comes from the collective forces of society, not from God, Pure Spirit, or Buddha Mind. There can be no provocation—calling forth—of transcendent powers from a higher trans-cosmic intelligence; at least, not in current academic discourse. Therefore, it all comes down to a placebo effect.

Paradoxically, from the perspective of nonduality, in which the transcendent appears as the imminent and external, this perspective is not entirely wrong. Grace can appear as a placebo effect. But magic can also appear as the result of an action taken upon a voodoo doll or other fetish that is in sympathetic attunement to a signified being. The spectrum of possibilities opened by magic cannot be limited, as the inherent freedom of consciousness cannot be curtailed. He mentions the Australian aboriginal gathering called a corroboree, in which the participants enter the Dreamtime, and while there they receive the knowledge of the Mysteries, of the ancient future, or more practically, of where the game is grazing, which are the healing herbs and psychedelic substances offered in this territory by Mother Nature, and where the water can be found along the desert song lines.

Our speaker wants to reduce it all to a matter of tribal politics. But can the politics of a tribe of shamans resonating together in the Dreamtime be compared with politics as practiced in current mass society? Is there any magic potency left in our political figureheads, whether it be Joe Biden, Ursula von der Leyen, Boris Johnson, Hillary Clinton, or Keith Starmer, for example? Can the House of Commons be compared with a corroboree? Some would say Trump still captures the allegiance of the deplorables with his charisma. But can such pop theater of cartoon populism be appropriately compared with the psychic power of a united group of divinely empowered beings?

The engine of tribal politics, this anthro asserts, is the ritual production of chaos disrupting the political order, followed by the restitution of order, in other words, a great reset. He doesn’t mention the work of Rene Girard, nor the sacrificial murders involved in such extreme rites, nor in which phase of the lifespan and deteriorating psychospiritual health of the tribe or civilization in which that sort of rite occurs. But that could certainly account for the public assassinations of a number of charismatic beings during a previous moment of disorder usually referred to as the hippie counterculture. In France, it is simply remembered as May ’68. In the U.S., the murders of the Kennedys, Martin Luther King, and John Lennon, to name only a few, constituted such a sacrificial offering, a decapitation of the visionaries that led to the establishment of a new order—now sometimes called the neoconservatives, but more generally, the hidden masters of the deep state.

Yet this analysis falls short of grasping the source of the charisma of those targeted cultural icons of freedom and creativity of yesteryear. Our lecturer refers to the anthro de Martino’s observation that rituals tend to enact a cyclical story of global destruction and world redemption. Is this mytheme not only preparing the tribe for the Eschaton, and for spiritually surviving cosmic annihilation, but also, more immediately, expressing our own loss of cosmic and divine consciousness and our need for imminent reawakening to our luminous supernal essence?

The foundational concept, our lecturer maintains, is what he calls controlling presence. But he cannot define the cause of the power of such presence, and so, he reduces it to a collective force field. But is not the real Controlling Presence what we usually refer to as God? To admit that there is, in fact, a Controlling Presence moving the world and determining our destiny would be to admit that one is disconnected from that Presence, and thus out of control. Are we not now in a world that is out of control? But who this time can return us to order and coherent control? Once having descended into the delusional states of demonic consciousness that are now dominant in the collective energy field, what countervailing power can defeat that dark force? It certainly cannot depend on public opinion. As he says, a world that works gives everyone in it the palpable sense that God, or an equivalent name for benign and omnipotent intelligence, is indeed in control, and all is well.

Ultimately, that sense of security cannot be faked. No wizard of Oz depending on technology to intimidate and control the masses will long remain safe behind his iron curtain. That is because the people demand salvation from the threat of nothingness, of extinction in death, and of suffering in life. A Christ figure who can deliver redemption on demand must be in actual resonance with the Father, the Lord of Life and Light. And the way to the Father is through the Mother, the Giver of unconditional love and forgiveness of sins. So, there are two intercessors, one in the Nirmanakaya and the other in the Sambhogakaya, as the Buddhist model describes the hierarchy of levels of consciousness.

Our good doctor does acknowledge that the controlling presence we all need is both inside and outside, or a recognition of the nonduality of the two. But he thinks the motive is paranoia, not metanoia. He believes the magical is distilled from primitive anxiety, not from the nectar of the gods. The adept Christed sorceror can certainly soothe those who are plagued with anxiety. But it is not merely the people’s blind belief in a savior that confers mana on such spiritually oriented beings and turns them into effective messianic precursors. Not even artificial intelligence can produce such impacts, even with the help of holograms and deep fake visual effects.

Our speaker refers to a hypothesized situation of tension, which a shaman copes with by connecting with what the anthros call an alter ego, a double, a shadow, a reflection, or an echo, that lies somehow beyond the sensory realm. He does not mention its possible description as a guardian angel, the Holy Spirit, or the Light of God. But far more often, it is conceived in such terms of radiance and splendor, not those of pale imitation, as he suggests.

He considers the feeling of oneness with Nature to be a reluctant compromise, a forced identification with the threatening Other, in this case Nature itself, rather than settling for the alternative of living in fear. But is it danger or beauty that sparks the sublime feeling of unity and sameness with all that appears? Can one perceive all as forms of a single emanation of divine light animated by the One Supreme Intelligence simply as a compensatory fantasy, rather than a breakthrough driven by awe and adoration?

This primal animism, which can be subsequently described by anthropologists as monism, pantheism, or panentheism, is nothing less than the direct apperception of the Face of God. Today’s techno arts can occasionally deliver impressive 3-D films like Avatar, but they cannot manufacture real avatars. It is that void, that lack of controlling presence, that is now swallowing the world, which lacks any capacity to sustain its illusory hubristic existence. But the symbols that come to represent the God-Self to the people of a tribe, or the masses in larger social orders, must have some living metaphoric link with the Real that triggers the inner core of one’s Being to vibrate and capture the attention and bring it to stillness and full presence. When such a link is broken, the society is doomed.

The anthros, however, put the cart before the horse. They think rituals that involve such acts as charming a venomous cobra or wearing a serpent as a garland, or undergoing other ordeals, like sitting in haunted charnel grounds at midnight and invoking the ghostly entities to join them, are all efforts to master terror by forging alliances of resonance with such dangerous Others.

But according to the teachers who actually train future shamans to lead such rituals, not the faux stage magicians, it is first necessary for the sorceror’s apprentice to establish continuous resonance with the deathless Self, the Dreamer Who Pervades the Dream, before engaging in such daring displays of bravado. Nonetheless, according to academic discourse, such an attainment can only be staged or mythical. It is not permitted to be accepted as a reality, but only as “an illusion with teeth.” The fear of death, in other words, cannot be overcome, except by self-deception. The kernel of trauma, the inevitable remainder, that can never be put into words, can never be extracted. It remains a splinter in the mind. This is postmodern ideology at its most despairing and nihilistic, purveying its conclusive mana-free judgment that we must all abandon hope.

The incoherence of this doctrine is apparent when one tries to reconcile the symbol as the source of moral power, with its status as the lethal nostalgia for the kryptonite of re-traumatization in the would-be superman whose home world of Krypton has been destroyed.

Our speaker identifies impersonal seductive marketing techniques that pretend to be personalized so that the viewer feels intimately addressed, with such rare phenomena as secret mantras that carry ancient energies transmitted to and through sacred signifiers when intoned while one is in resonance with the signified Source of consciousness. But there is no comparison between the two.

In the end, he must accept his inability to determine the truth about the power that manifests as controlling presence. He admits his bafflement by abandoning efforts to alchemically distill the real substance, and leaves it as simply “that nameless, irreducible element of surplus enjoyment that leaks out of all these clichés.” I do credit his honesty and humility.

Finally, our intrepid speaker becomes himself a figure of surplus enjoyment by ending his talk with an anecdote of a dream he had while writing his thesis. In the dream, he was reading a book that obviously was plagiarizing the great Durkheim, without giving credit to the master for all his concepts. He got angry at the author, when he suddenly realized that the book was in fact written by Durkheim himself. Is our interlocutor not indicating that he was possessed by the spirit, the mana, of Durkheim, who signifies the Holy Spirit, or at least the founding father, for anthropologists, an entelechy that was in him more deeply than his own ego, and responsible for animating his semantic output constituting his book and his intellectual self-presentation to his academic colleagues and rivals. Who gave him the dream? Was it only a nameless element of surplus enjoyment that leaked into his sleeping psyche? Or was it a gift and koan from the unknown Self?

To end with a short reflection on the title of Durkheim’s classic study, The Elementary Forms of Religious Life, it is crucial to translate the term elementary not as primitive, but as the pure essence. By seeking the pure essence of religious life, Durkheim was indeed looking for the true holy grail, and even though he did not discover it, he did sustain the fascination of anthropology itself, as a portal to wonderment in our disenchanted world, and offering the chance, at the cost of indenture to the prevailing academic rules of engagement, of witnessing the miraculous.

Om Shanti
Shunyamurti