Monday 9 March 2015



two visions

15 comments:

  1. Arent thoughts just ossified visions?
    Mere skeletons of visions?
    Epitaphs of visions?

    (And by "thoughts" I mean "ideas", especially philosophical ideas.)

    The first few seconds when we are waking up are quite interesting to me. We are just like a computer when its booting. In those seconds we dont know what we are, who we are, or that there are any beings. We emerge. Then suddenly it all starts appearing, popping up: the self, things, future, past, our worries, our sadness, our joys, expectations, memories, etc. The Human Being Operating System fully loaded.

    The software also has protection, like a firewall. In most, visions are filtered through and what one obtains instead of visions are abstract structures / sentences each word being only a tip of an iceberg, only the peak of a mountain. Only a pointer to a whole world of meaning. Words like boats floating on an ocean of meaning.

    Is poetry the bridge between the oceanic infinite meaning and the abstract units of language? It still uses words, but they are not used in the common pragmatic way - instead they are... inverted... pointing towards that immersed meaning beneath them. Usually words point to other words and make us slide on the surface of language; in poetry, we are made aware of the space between words, and its oceanic profundity... and we dive in.

    I had several "breakdowns" recently, my belief system collapsed, but I think its not over yet - that its just the beginning ... perhaps its this serial collapsing that is true progress; not religious building of castles in the air.

    One of these collapses showed that in order to make progress, one has to find a way to use language that is not conventional. And that philosophical language is still too conventional. For instance, the philosophical way of constructing text is like a pyramid structure; a geometric monolith; axioms, theorems, deductions - it emulates ordine geometrico... but the text of the mystic is more like vines of a vineyard, they circle around meaning without shamelessly exposing it.

    Visions seem to come from "the fountain that was not made by the hands of men"! (I take that from the great lyricist of the Grateful Dead, named Robert Hunter. A genuinely great poet. Ripple, Box of Rain, Mountains of the Moon - are staggering.)

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    1. Against "Buddhism":

      How can one institutionalize visions, poetry, mysticism? Was it all just a strategy to obtain donations so that the contemplatives could focus on other things? But its a dangerous game to play... sooner or later one has to bend to the will of the people (who possess the gold). And thats why often the "philosopher" and also the "high priest" always served the king...

      Example: a prominent modern Chinese Buddhist reformer named Taixu tried to court Adolf Hitler; excerpt from his letter to Hitler:

      "Thus only the Buddhist religion, in which these three characteristics are primary virtues, can be the religion of the Germanic people. And only that most excellent scion of ancient Aryan stock, Shakyamuni, the Holy, can be the religious leader of the Germanic people, that most excellent scion of ancient Aryan stock."

      Ha! "excellent scion of ancient Aryan stock"! This is how he tried to court him.

      Whole letter was published on Reddit:

      http://www.reddit.com/r/Buddhism/comments/2v6o76/in_1937_the_dharma_master_taixu_%E5%A4%AA%E8%99%9A_wrote_a_letter/

      The most important thing I learn from the 7th patriarch is that the problem with "knowing" infinity, ie. taking a philosophical stance towards it, is an attempt to freeze a burning flame. And so the whole idea of "knowing" has to be abandoned for another verb, perhaps "dancing"? Learning to dance to the rhythm of infinity?

      In the informal Zuimonki speeches or talks by Dogen, he says something I liked; he told the monks they should try to write even though they are not talented, even though their verses are ugly. What do you think about that advice? I think Dogen was one of those who tried to institutionalize contemplation (which cannot be done), and who had his own empire-building agenda... but now and then you find sparks of genius in his texts. I dont think I will ever try to study / read him again though. The way he stressed a certain lotus position is a joke. It would be great to think that it was a purposeful joke. "Becoming a Buddha involves imitating a Buddha statue, nothing else." - It functions great as a sarcastic "fuck off" to inquiring Zen students... but taken seriously its insane!

      Isnt it more interesting to instead "meditate" on how something like "meditation" is even possible? And doesnt the very idea that there needs to be a "technique" to meditation already prevent the possibility of genuine meditation emerging? Sitting in solitude, merging with infinity, how could such things be confined to a step/by/step tutorial? "Mysticism for Dummies"!

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  2. "Scale Relativity And Fractal Space-Time: A New Approach to Unifying Relativity and Quantum Mechanics"
    http://www.amazon.com/Scale-Relativity-And-Fractal-Space-Time/dp/1848166508

    "Spacetime May Have Fractal Properties on a Quantum Scale"
    http://phys.org/news157203574.html

    Wow... Time is inherently non-differentiable and recursive.

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    1. laurent nottale is interesting, i think he is talking about the compound 'space - time' which is his relativistic viewpoint, oddly you have to get into loop quantum gravity to get a more compartmentalized/discrete notion of time !

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    2. see what is time ?

      is time a mutation of space or is space a mutation of time or are both the shallower reflectives (emergents !) of some deeper substrate ?

      what turtle does the deeper substrate sit on ! :o)

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    3. see what is time ?

      is time a mutation of space or is space a mutation of time or are both the shallower reflectives (emergents !) of some deeper substrate ?

      what turtle does the deeper substrate sit on ! :o)

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    4. Is the deeper substrate mind?

      http://www.reddit.com/r/philosophy/comments/2yq0kp/does_weak_emergence_entail_panexperentialism/

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    5. "meaning is a fluid" leave the definite for the indefinite, it's much more malleable , you are just building failed crystalline geometries . .

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    6. That actually made a lot of sense...

      I need to become a creator, an artist, stuff that gets to deepest meaning of things.

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    7. "Is the deeper substrate mind?"

      what if...

      the deeper substrate is (in) the absence of mind?

      what if...

      the deeper substrate is the absence of a deeper substrate?

      consider:

      seeing all things as One is no match for seeing no things at all

      (the first separates and then looks for a perfect glue

      the second does not dissect reality in the first place)

      whatever my mind focuses on

      "substrate", "mind", "One"

      it excludes all else that is then just "background noise"

      but what if that blurry, unfocused, the peripherial background noise, that is the true entryway?

      then we are fucked!

      (you and I, who want to philosophize about reality)

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  3. I have two, possibly three visions, that I carry all my life, and I dont know what to do with them. The strange this is that they persist. I feel as if they are "dreams I had as a child". But I Dont know if that is really the case. The strange thing is - that I dont remember much about my childhood... very little. Im the most childhood-amnesiac person I know. Most of the memories I have from my childhood are false, retroactively constructed from photographs. Anyway, these two dreams, or visions, are following me wherever I go. I do not understand them, nor why I Forget everything but not those two dreams. It seems as if they are older than me. As if I dreamed them even before I was born. One is a feeling that I am adopted, and I see another phantom house next to my parents house. And I go to our balcony and I climb to the balcony of that other house. And I see them dining inside, and I am so happy to know they are my real family, but I also feel bad about abandoning my "adoptive" parents since after all, they cared for me etc. I know for certain I am not adopted in the real life, I resemble my sisters a lot, everyone says that... I think that dream even compelled me to leave Slovenia and seek life in exotic places, like East Asia. - The other dream is even stranger and I cannot even properly describe it... it is a neighbour (a real neigbor ,now deceased, who had a speech impediment)... he is standing in the middle of the street (the same street my parents house is located) and pointing to a rain puddle.

    What are these things, these meaningless dreams that structure our existence?

    Is it clues we left for ourselves before we chose to forget (what we are)? Before we jumped in the river Lethe, the river of oblivion?

    i dont know

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    1. these are like personal myths

      the third one is much darker, and it feels like it comes after those two (logically or chrono-logically, I Dont know)

      it is a gruesome monster of unspeakable ugliness that produces the most terrifying screeching noise, and then there is a very attractive blonde curvy woman, like a porn star, and she is tearing meat from her labia and feeding it to the monster, however she doesnt seem to be suffering, but perversely enjoying

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    2. those are good dreams / visions ! :o)

      it's always fascinating how our brains see much more about us than we are prepared to admit ourselves . .

      your neighbour astutely indentified your issue with limiting yourself to a puddle when you should be walking the shore of a sea

      you are a phantom btw . .

      an autistic half presence with a foot in the ocean that prefers the puddle . . .

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    3. Powerful reply Andrew. It is as if you have given meaning to something that was meaningless my whole life. I am not sure whether it is The meaning, or one of possible meanings. But perhaps visions are in a kind of "super position" and do not have a definite meaning, instead they spring forth a multitude of meanings ("overdetermination")?

      It seems as if my whole life I have been trying to become a full presence, and it is always a failure. Why is it impossible to exist? To be(come) something? To identify with anything?

      Is it impossible just for some, or for everyone? Perhaps it is like this for everyone, just that some are better at pretending to exist?

      In any case, I do not really care about how it is for the others. I came to realize something quite mind-shattering that is, you were right when you said this spiritual matter is solipsistic. In a way one cannot begin to process reality properly without taking a solipsist stance... it is either solipsism or the society, the meanings that are useful for society.

      So perhaps it is coming to a point where this individual will get tired of trying to exist, dreaming of identification, of becoming a full presence, a Buddhist master, an emperor, a Pope, a husband, a father, a business man, a white man in Asia, and instead dissolve that half presence into a full absence, swallowed by the vortex of infinite fluidity of meaning

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    4. I have infinite hesitation upon pressing "Publish" to any comment or anything I ever write... I decided to try something new, a more... stream of consciousness approach where I publish my thoughts more directly and then stay with that discomfort, shame, even self-loathing at times, and observe it... just experimenting, trying something new... normally I self-censor a lot.

      Very powerful reply Andrew - it had an impact but I cannot yet digest or understand that impact.

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