I found another reason why I’m so fascinated by O Sensei’s life story, besides the fact that he devised the metaphysical fitness regimen I’m pleasantly addicted to.
He belonged to the generation that’s influenced my life the most dramatically. I mean, literally dramatically—the generation that laid the bricolage for the swirling psycho-dramaturgic escapades that constitute my semiliterate cybernetic peasant existence.
In other words, my favorite writers are from that generation—from the late 19th to mid-20th century…basically…more or less.
You got P.D. Ouspensky—brilliant Russian mystic philosopher who found the fifth dimension and was able to describe it in eloquent pedestrian terms, making it accessible even to regular run-of-the-mill mamalukes like me—but then he gets caught up in a neo-gnostic cult run by a conman carpet merchant hypnotist talking about how “we are food for the moon.” Okay, even if that’s true, what else am I gonna be? If that’s what it is, that’s what it is.
You got Fernando Pessoa—whose Book of Disquietude will forever haunt my own vain attempts at metapersonal esoteric poignancy.
And then you got Henry Miller (of course), Anaïs Nin—sprinkle in a little bit of D.H. Lawrence… While I’m not nearly as decadent, these three literary libertines helped me understand how to not take my own orphic tendencies so seriously, so urgently, and to let myself sink into the fragrant patience of the scenery…a little bit…sometimes.
Meanwhile, in Japan, you got Deguchi-san and O Sensei conducting seances—conjuring gods—building shrines and dojos—communicating with ancient deities—caught up in the current come along with apprehensions of mechanization, industrialization, plowing, vowing, striving to retain kinship with the spirits of nature. The Kami.
Deguchi’s voluminous writing is so tempting to tackle. Part of me’s glad it hasn’t been translated into English yet—it would take forever to read…
I also figured out why I’m obsessed with Chinkon Kishin.
Because it’s from pre-factory farm times.
It’s from before we were doomed to factory labor or, for us in “developed nations,” living off its exploitations.
Chinkon Kishin is from before the peasants had to symbolically choose between state-run factory farms or corporation-run factory farms—either way, we were getting factory farms.
Who decided this? Who knows?
But I don’t blame the gods.
Aikido was created during this crucial time in human history—right as we were being merged with machines—to keep humanity divinely animated. If this spark is lost, the bridge between heaven and earth collapses—or so I’ve heard.
