Everytime we approach any answer, the question undergoes a transformation.
-- When I see how sarcasm takes over the world, how far right gains strength, how life itself gets taken over by multi-billion corporations, how information gets logarithmic on our asses, how for the youngster reality and virtuality get mixed up more and more, how psychopaths become a target marketing group on their own and how worldwide - Anonymous, Fema, Transition etc. - different movements are started bottom-up to try to counteract the big brother spiral, I wonder: at what signal did the Roman citizens realize their civilisation was about to fall and become history? As it has been said: civilization is the transition between barbarism and decadence. -- There is no meaning? All life is just a random pattern? Maybe the meaning of life might is just that: the search for a meaning. -- Death? Let's imagine reality as a purely material event. Death as nothing but the decay of cells. Consciousness as a complex electrical interaction between neurons and synapses. Quite plausible imho, if it were not for a small quirk: the natural fear of death which appears in most living organisms might hint at something different, namely the innate knowledge of a bigger picture. If our cells intrinsically knew the finality of the moment of death, wouldn't we simply feel at peace with an inevitable rest, just as we accept all other stages of existence? I wouldn't underestimate the cellular intelligence, it took us this far. So if there was only oblivion at the end, void, vacuum, nothing - and thus, nothing to be afraid of, how did the secular and recurring fear get programmed into our DNA - if it were not from something beyond the manifested world of perceptions? -- Would you take the red pill or the blue pill? Fucking hell, screw Ericksonian hypnosis, I'll take a beer! -- Ritorno Macro- and microprosopus: kaballah tells the downward story. We're supposed to inverse the movement and go back. On the other hand, it seems natural to most to visualize a soul inside our bodies. And Kaballah indeed tells us the Adams - from the man Adam, the material world or body, to Adam Adamah (the soul) and Adam Betzalmenu (the spirit) to Adam Kadmon (the divine) - are to be found inside one another, but the other way around: the body inside the soul inside the spirit inside the divine. Maybe we should try to think like Cyrus Teed: our body, the materiality as the outer, superficial shell; and the deeper we logarithmically travel inside the further we part from this mortal coil and the more we travel towards the consciousness singleton at the core. Kind of brings a spin to Gehenna as well, the ultimate way to get lost in ones own personal hell, digging deeper and deeper outwards into an infinite self-made illusion. There are as many perpendiculars on the world as there are individuals. But the center has no perpendicular at all, at all. -- "Eternity in a grain of sand". In a grain of salt maybe, and maybe that phrase has an alchemical meaning. Back then Flamel defined a new, third essence, next to sulphur and mercury. -- Map and territory Our thoughts, symbols, language, structures, patterns, on one side and consensus reality on the other. And through their interaction, the growing realization that the territory itself is a treasure map for a third reality: the spiritual. Korzybski might have build a structural differential with and extra compartment at the top of the paraboloid. A translucent sphere perhaps, the centre of which being everywhere. In alchemy it took some time before Paracelsus decided to revolutionize the dual worldview of Sulphur and Mercury. In a fit of enlightment he evoked three principles - Salt (the body or material world, the first territory), Mercury (the soul or the mental world, the first map consisting of symbols, myths, language) and Sulphur (the spirit or spiritual world). Sulphur might be the hidden territory, mapped in the material world and slightly percieved through our incomplete senses, hence the similarities in both alchemy and astrology between the material and the spiritual; the matter being abstracted further by our thinking, resulting in a meta-map, hence the belief of the Aristotelians in a higher mathematical reality of archetypes. In most cases, philosophers consider a duality: material-spiritual, mental-spiritual or material-mental, this last being the basis of the current paradigm originating in the Renaissance, the Age of Reason. Maybe every period in human history can be labelled as based upon one of the three above realty tunnels, and only few as Paracelsus did see the two-dimensional triangle of human reality. Giambattista Vico also accounted for three ages of man in consecutive historical cycles. We might think of an infinite recess of maps being territories for other maps, or territories being maps from other territories. Maybe the simplest stone can and will ultimately become spiritual as seen by both Buddhism and Kabbala. -- Büchenwald. A forest of books. To me the very idea of paradise. To my father the absolute hell he wanted to help liberate, lying about his age. He was 16 and found himself in military gear walking in a world of corpses.
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(first published in Maybe Quarterly vol. 2 issue 4, winter solstice 2005. This online magazine was sadly removed but one can still find its reflections in the Wayback Machine.)
Personification and falsehoodGet a grip on Bat Kol, I'm taking away Jacob's ladder
A kaballist also sees life as a theatre play. The role played is considered a mere shadow resulting from the rules of the divine light. The role on te stage of existence is played seriously but without equating the self with the person. Any emotion, thought, feeling are just necessary props for playing the role. Both the awakened kaballist and the conscious pataphysician (hence the apostroph) try not to desire, but to elevate the value of the world they adapt themselves to by the way they consider it. In this sense both can be seen as an art of existence. A few years ago I was striken by similitudes between 'pataphysics and kaballah, two subjects I'm very fond of. I started writing down phrases that seemed relevant to the subject but I never once thought I would have the qualities to write something worthfull of it. The more I collected the more it seemed unlikely to sort it all out. Then a special number of the Viridis Candela, regular publication of the collège de 'pataphysique was announced centered on the figure of Adam. I got to write a medium piece in french, linking Adam to various protagonists in Jarry's writings. I send it but got no reaction except a small sarcastic reference two months later. As a 'pataphysician I felt no grief, on the contrary I felt motivated to dig deeper into the matter. Encouraged by my fellow Maybe Logic academicians, here are the unfinished results. I consider this as a work in progress which will probably take me years before I get bored of it, so for the exception of two parts below do not expect any polished text. My english translation found its place in part 3 below and part 1 was started a few weeks ago. The rest gets only hinted at, the possible directions for each bit described frugally. I apologize for possible errors in english. I hate when a language gets raped, but being raised in both dutch and french I do not possess the english tongue enough to ascertain an error-proof text! Let alone an attempt at E-prime… Thank Eris (and Douglas Adams) for Babelfish!
Ayin and Ayin Sof searching for an answer (1)notes |
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Auditeur Réel du Collège de 'Pataphysique, Maybe Logician, Orde van de Blaasmachine in de Bâtafysica, Chorepiscopische Protonotaris, Zetetic Patagnost |