A Reflection on Mystical Anarchism in the Works of Gustav Landauer^215For both Landauer and Voegelin the process of re-connection
is an experiential descending into consciousness, or spirit, with
the aim of clearing out, in Voegelin’s words, “all ideological junk
to make the conditio humana visible once again.”^83 In particular,
Voegelin proposed the method of recounting childhood or pre-re-
flective experiences that had raised questions about mind and re-
ality, moments of awareness “that cause one to apprehend some
part of reality as opaque, as something that calls for interpre-
tation.”^84 However, the interpretation of awe inducing moments
does not remain a purely personal and individual endeavour, but
the interpretation of consciousness also implies a re-interpreta-
tion of one’s relationships to reality. According to Voegelin, one
remembers moments that impel
toward reflection and do so because they have excited conscious-
ness to the “awe” of existence. The nature of the irrupting experi-
ences and of the excitations they induce, together with the result
of an “attunement” of consciousness to its “problems” seem to me
to be the determinants on which depend the radicalism and the
breadth of philosophical reflection.^85Hence, Voegelin considered anamnesis to be the precondition for
philosophy, as only “recapturing reality in opposition to its con-
temporary deformation...”^86 made possible a genuine, unmediat-
ed and direct reflection on reality.
It is precisely within Landauer’s and Voegelin’s theorisation of
respectively the soul and consciousness, which, both urged, needs
to be actively reclaimed from the influence of the second reality
and can only be done so by the individual herself that a common,
anarchic claim can be found. It begins with Voegelin’s insistence
that to search for an operational definition of consciousness and
of the experience of consciousness would defeat the purpose of
its exploration. This is because generically valid propositions
about the experience of consciousness cannot, by the virtue of
consciousness being the very first reality of personal experience,
be given from another or from the outside. By virtue of it expe-
riencing not only immanent but also transcendent, unfathomable
reality consciousness lies beyond the reach of rational and formal
logic.^87 Hence,