Tacking into the Wind

Preaching, Passion, and Illumination

2011-10-27T18:04:00.000-07:00

"It would be a poor thing to be an atom in a universe without physicists, and physicists are made of atoms - A physicist is the atom's way of knowing about atoms..." -George Wald

"...no man can find out the work that God maketh from the beginning to the end." Ecclesiastes 3:11

Meditation on these points. The subject is that which is in the object that can stand outside the object and view itself. The faculty for this is consciousness.

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I continue my reading of Aristotle at the Metaphysics as an oblique reference to these thoughts.

I don't find the word preacher appealing. It means minister or sermonizer. It also means Ecclesiastic. But Solomons are rare. My problem is, I guess, and they are not alone in this at all, preachers make you feel the heat but if you want to see the light, move on because the heat of their passion effectively blocks out any enlightenment. Conceded, heat is a form of light, and does give comfort if you are out in the cold. So does passion, and they do communicate passionately, and this is good because faith begins in the heart. It is felt, not reasoned. That feeling is the first tentative step to wisdom, understanding, light. Preachers compare to sophists. Rhetoric is their main faculty; and they both pass the collection plate from Protagoras on down. But truth can't be conveyed rhetorically. Truth is not something that can be taught, or bought. Only "things" are teachable. Truth might inform things. So might beauty. But you can't teach beauty any more than truth itself. Both are available to be realized, not learned. Truth and beauty and the other concomitants of consciousness are aspects, facets, of the spirit that confer universality. Sermonizers pray for this or that, implying they have power to move God in their favor, and, more to the point, that you can too. Well, "Deeds can't dream what dreams can do", but, intention plays a greater part, I think, than actual work on behalf of the petitioner by the divine creative force behind the whole existential Reality. What really happens in these settings is a longing for the Real, for truth, is set up but never fulfilled. Instead they are satisfied with their dogma, which can be taught, and is bought, dearly. But dogma does not confer universality and truth does and the sophist's belief he has a direct pipeline to truth, in the final analysis, tragically shuts off the possibility of discovery.

To be clear, I don't doubt the divinity of Christ, or any man, not that all men are Gods. Is a drop of water the ocean? I submit Christ understood how it was, and more importantly, how it wasn't. People following this path like to say, "I know God loves me." First of all, how selfish. Secondly, say to them, if God loves everything the same then it begins to look a lot like indifference, and watch their eyes glaze over. Their God is anthropogenic and the lie to their "faith" is that the more they pursue it the more they claim certitude. Its true, rather, that real faith results in greater doubt, trepidation, humility, the closer one approaches the divine. In the end one arrives at a sort of infinite resignation that knowing God is impossible.

Its written that in the beginning was the Word and the first act of creation was of light. Leaving aside what is the Word think of the light as principle, not as visible light, per se. As principle, illumination is participated in by the various forms, the concomitants of consciousness, e.g. Love, Liberty, Truth, Beauty, Grace, Wisdom, and so on. All of these pertain to the substance of things; they are aspects of the indwelling spirit, of the potentiality inhering in the energia of matter and of the entelechy, the end within. It is the form of things that facilitate display of these and in doing so universality is conferred on the subject by their presence. The form makes a thing, a painting, for instance, individual, but it is the beauty that gives it appeal, universality. Forms make the concomitants intelligible, available, individual. The concomitants make the individuals universal. People like to ask what a work of art means. It doesn't mean anything. It is a question; Who am I? If it is a beautiful piece the answer is; I am everything that is. My meaning and purpose consists in the instantiation of beauty in this individual object. Likewise for love and the others. You can't teach love, liberty, wisdom, grace, beauty, but your life is enriched beyond compare if you can find paths that participate in the divine light in which these qualities facilitate the awakening, the apotheosis, of the divine. You can be Love, Freedom, Wise, Grace, Beauty; Truth can be lived. No learning necessary. To borrow from T.S. Eliot, the drop of water slips into the shining sibilant sea and arriving where it began knows the place for the first time.

September Birthdays

2011-09-29T15:57:00.000-07:00

My son, Christopher M. Hinds, turned 26 this past Sunday. Granddaughter, Eleanor Margarete Hinds, was two Sept. 6. Nice photos at this link, Au Coeur blog. They live on Nantucket.

God is Beyond Experience

2011-09-16T07:28:00.000-07:00

Soren Kierkegaard, the great Christian philosopher, wrote that "God does not think, he creates. God does not exist, he is eternal." Athiests ignorantly deny God because they can't find empirical evidence. At the same time religionists claim they do experience God, many claiming to even talk to "him", but mostly they "feel" his presence.

But, experience is anthropomorphic. God can't be experienced any more than can eternity and his mind can't be known because thinking is not his function. Knowing his creation is knowing his work, surely, but not him directly. Experience relates to things. You are a thing. All you experience is a thing. God is not a thing. You can't experience not thing, God. He doesn't exist, he creates. When my religious friends say they can feel the spirit of God they are really feeling themselves. That is, their religious experience is a form of self love, self worship. Finally, Being is not the same thing, infinitely. Each instance is all there is and the next an entirely new creation but based on the preceding. Does a waterfall ever change? Can you put your hand in the same river twice? Essence does not precede existence. Existence precedes essence; Existential means this. To say essence precedes existence is to claim to know God, an impossibility. The form of a table is new for every instance of table, just like the river or the waterfall.

Poised on the Edge of Oblivion

2011-09-04T13:06:00.000-07:00

The Scream, 1893, Edvard Munch

From Plat It Again Sam, 1972

WOODY ALLEN: That's quite a lovely Jackson Pollock, isn't it?

GIRL IN MUSEUM: Yes it is.

WOODY ALLEN: What does it say to you?

GIRL IN MUSEUM: It restates the negativeness of the universe, the hideous lonely emptiness of existence, nothingness, the predicament of man forced to live in a barren, godless eternity, like a tiny flame flickering in an immense void, with nothing but waste, horror, and degradation, forming a useless bleak straightjacket in a black absurd cosmos.

WOODY ALLEN: What are you doing Saturday night?

GIRL IN MUSEUM: Committing suicide.

WOODY ALLEN: What about Friday night?

GIRL IN MUSEUM: [leaves silently]

In a constant state of dread wanting only to understand with the full knowledge that is impossible. G. K. Chesterton thought the madman is not the man who has lost his reason. The madman is the man who has lost everything but his reason. Reason is the giver of false hope. If it's reasonable, if it can be measured, is that the same as knowing, as understanding? I don't think so. All one Knows really is the metric, that by which measurement is made and that metric when reduced to the lowest common denominator is the thing, our physical body. Measurement is not understanding but it might lead to same. When attachment arises wisdom is shut out. That something is reasonable ends up being such attachment. Any answer worth anything can only be intuited. It's direct, unfiltered, knowledge that satisfies the heart. The darkness that is ever dogging us, the dread of meaningless and essentially empty purpose leaves one with only one choice, to be taken with infinite resignation, and that is the leap of faith. The reasonable man wants to own truth but what's true is that truth owns him.

If the whole of reality is an apotheosis then it seems obvious every instance is new. "G_d" wouldn't waste time doing the same thing over and over. This obviates Nietzsche's notion that its the same thing repeated infinitely. The very fact that species mutate is proof enough the process more resembles a fractal than a simple progression; and any eventuation is rooted in a universal principle. Light, e.g., is not just light, but an expression on many levels of the principle of illumination. The nucleus of an atom illuminates its electrons follows the same principle that a star illuminates its planets and a lord his disciples. Likewise, the star confers universality on the planets and they confer on the star individuality. Aristotle thought matter conferred universality, form individuality. In the same vein, God gives man universality while man confers on the Deity individuality. He is the author of apotheosis, his creation the instrumentality. He doesn't just live in his creatures, but through them he knows himself, has the illusion of sleeping and waking, dieing and being born. It is infinitely self-inventing, and every instantiation increases and enriches the pregnancy for ensuing evolution. All that will ever be is already actual in the "beginning" even though all that will ever be is an elaboration on the infinite stream of prior instances. Every new instance is a new beginning and a new boundary for the new. Every new instantiation is an elaboration of its predecessor. And, our heavens are self made as are our hells. It's all about individual responsibility and self-reliance. Belief in nothing gets you just that.

The Cultural Psychopathology of Don Juanism

2011-06-30T14:12:00.000-07:00

"Gaze steadfastly at stars which though distant are yet present to the mind."

"When attachment arises wisdom is shut out."

I am in your eyes for others to see.

Bodies mediate the meeting of souls; but souls meet each other immediately when eyes meet. The depth in the pupil of the eye is the quiet place that gives meaning to such encounters. Just a glance into the eyes of another is to directly encounter the depths of the abyss rendering attachment impossible. Creatures are often startled by another's gaze, and rightly so, for at that moment infinity looks into infinity.

___________

Eroticism, Music, and Madness (Cont'd)

Meaning presupposes itself. Formal activity in the human mind has its roots in the form paradigmatic for an individual, namely, the body, and the paradigmatic act is speech, utterance, giving of the word, rooted in the Greek, Logos, reason, the word; controlling principle of the universe manifest by speech. From the Bible, John 1, "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God...And the word was made flesh.." Giving of the Word, the first principle, is like the axle of a wheel, all meaning, movement, is presupposed, sensible, in so far as the center, the first principle, the axle, is stationary.

Language has a way of assuming the form of its objects. We say chair to reference a real thing. Math and music have an abstract relationship to existential mass. Mathematics has in common with music the fact that it does not have reflex pronouns, egocentric particulars; it has no terms like speech. But music has element in time, mathematics not. Music and mathematics take us out of the world; attending to them in a sense places one in a non-material place. But mathematics is static as a medium while music is a dynamic medium. Mathematics takes us out of the world in the Cartesian sense that it is of the mind which is separate from body. Mathematics joined with science and technology becomes a dynamic which hurriedly takes us out of the world, much more than music; consider nuclear weapons, e.g. People aren't careful with their speech as in times past and as speech has become less responsible music has taken over, it is that by which we are encouraged to fulfill, or rather escape from ourselves.

What about expression in architecture? Architecture employs the concrete medium of existential mass. Look at the endurance of the thrusting movement of architecturally rendered faith, the leap toward edification seen in a great Gothic cathedral. Architecture is concrete by virtue of its duration in time; it endures of itself. Words must be spoken, mathematical formulas contemplated, but music is the true contrary of existential mass in respect of being the most abstract medium. It does not endure by itself in time, but only by virtue of its being played. Architecture endures by itself in time because it also exists in space; music has no existence in space, and thereby lacks the characteristic of enduring in time, so we can say that music is the most abstract medium.

What does it mean for a medium to be the most abstract? It means, simply, that it is most minimal. Don Juan seeks immediacy. He minimizes the mediate. Mystery, discover, the sense of being on the brink of life fulfilling experience grows with increasing economy of means, and increasing risk. Musical life has the highest economy; it only exists in time and abstracts the soul thus from the material. Ambition is alien and confining to the basic truth of reality for the sensuous genius, which is openness or vulnerability itself. Music minimizes the mediate, and in this respect it is the ideal expression of Don Juanism. The apparent flow of time is the most essential characteristic of immediacy. In mediation there are varieties of things which come to us one at a time, sequentially. Remove the sequential aspect of the world of objects as they pass in the stream of consciousness and you have immediacy. In immediacy sequentiality becomes secondary to the ostensible flow of time just in itself thus obviating the intentional thickness of consciousness which results from the repression of unselective consciousness in favor of selective consciousness. Music carries us away, out of ourselves, destroying intention. Architectural expression of Christian faith points to the heavens as where the human soul will find completion. Music likewise expresses a reaching for what is impossibly beyond grasping. The word was made flesh and flesh artificially separates itself from that paradigmatic act that is lost in the spirit of the sensuous. Soren Kierkegaard thought that Christianity brought sensuousness into the world by excluding it; it is the contrary of spirituality. The long sabbatical from language and the descent into the musical expresses the urge for immediacy, to be in the world but not of it. Self gratification regardless of the consequence is the hallmark. Don Juanism is cultural psychopathology. Narcissism, confusion, estrangement, dread, and self loathing are its fruits.

The implications of unrestrained sensuousness date from the romantic period, the revolt of the 18th and early 19th century against the artistic, political, philosophical, and religious principles associated with neoclassicism. It is characterized in literature and philosophy by irrationality, fancy, fabulousness, impracticality, and emphasizes above all else feeling and originality. It is of the heart, not of the mind. Everything is transitory, the individual self is the only certitude. The most valid response to anything is the emotional one. From the religious to the political, from the artistic to the scientific, this error of elevating feelings above all other consideration reigns. The wheel has come off the axle. Emotion has its place but when conflated with faith whether in religion, science, or anything else, and sought as an end in itself, when this attachment arises, wisdom is shut out and spiritual devolution follows. One hears in the exhortations of fanatics whether religious, scientific, or whatever, that they are addicts of their own pathos. One hears in their tearful, dolorous, apocalyptic prophecy a music of exhortation calling us to their version of the only dance there is. They have completely lost sight of Truth.

There are real consequences to having a false concept of reality. I like to say the world is infinitely malleable; we get to make of it whatsoever we wish. That is, in fact, our commission. But without a solid foundation it gets increasingly difficult to keep the thing from collapsing. We can't continue forever to conflate the axle with the wheel; man, still in his infancy, if he is to remain sane, must not fail to appeal to that Primal Spirit we call G_d. To believe only in himself as mere mortal man is to believe in nothing and by my metrics believing in nothing will in the end get you exactly that. Nothing. So take heart. The Sun will supposedly be here for another four and a half billion years and continues to orbit the hub of the Milky Way every 280 million years. That wheel goes round and round while false religion, science, politics, and philosophy will have their day and in passing give sustenance to new growth. Christianity merged the principles Greek Logos and Hebrew Davar, Word, action of God in space time. These and other expressions of the first principle endure forever and when you look deeply into another's eyes you can see forever the stars there which though distant are yet present to the mind.

Tacking Into the Wind

2011-06-17T13:38:00.000-07:00

Occasionally I get hits associated with "tacking into the wind" searches, so I thought I'd put up a picture. It's just a way of making headway even when forces are aligned against you. If you approach things obliquely you'll find that you can often slide around the obstacles. It's sort of like going through the valleys to get over the mountains. Often we aren't equipped to meet adversity, the winds of change, head on. Tackle overwhelming impediments from their weak points, from the side, from an unexpected avenue of approach or concealment, in order to turn their torque into an harnessable force.

I have sailed. Mostly very small craft which easily capsize, but can just as easily be righted. There is a great personal thrill to be enjoyed in running very close to a hard wind on the razor edge of loosing it all. In such risk lies realization that immeasurable discovery is the action of the unknown. In an instant your boat is on its side and you are swimming now, not sailing, but it only takes a minute to right the thing and make another run. The stronger the wind the better, for we tire of mundane challenges and long to really test our abilities against the impossible.

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Estragon: We always find something, eh Didi, to give us the impression we exist.

Pozzo: ....one day we were born, one day we shall die, the same day, the same second...they give birth astride of a grave, the light gleams an instant, then it's night once more. On!

Waiting for Godot
Samuel Beckett

Yoga and Vipassana Meditation

2011-06-02T14:10:00.000-07:00

Yoga and Vipassana Meditation, pdf of a lecture by Professor Desani in Rangoon, Burma. I've written about Desani elsewhere in this blog. Desani.org, linked in my right panel, hosts this pdf. I'm grateful to Todd Katz for his efforts in maintaining the Desani.org site.

De Generatione et Corruptione

2011-05-24T13:10:00.000-07:00

Everywhere Aristotle utilizes the phases of qualities passing into and out of their opposite states as an anchor to the progress of his thinking. Generation and Corruption studied as contraries is fitting to this basic principle or method and it fits his contention that the Real is always at least two in number.

Coming to be necessarily implies the pre-existence of something which potentially 'is', but actually 'is not'; and this something is spoken of both as 'being' and as 'not-being'.

Coming to be occurs in the region about the centre. (of the Universe, i.e., Earth) The originative sources of generation are first matter and form. A third originative source must also be present for while it is characteristic of matter to suffer action, i.e. to be moved: to move, i.e. to act, belongs to a different 'power'. Things assume forms which are their essential nature.

The third originative source is the alternating approach and retreat of the Sun, which corresponds with generation and corruption. "Coming-to-be and passing-away will, as we have said, always be continuous, and will never fail owing to the cause we stated. And this continuity has a sufficient reason on our theory. For in all things, as we affirm, Nature always strives after 'the better'. Now 'being'... is better than 'not-being': but not all things can possess 'being', since they are too far removed from the 'originative source. 'God therefore adopted the remaining alternative, and fulfilled the perfection of the universe by making coming-to-be uninterrupted: for the greatest possible coherence would thus be secured to existence, because that 'coming-to-be should itself come-to-be perpetually' is the closest approximation to eternal being."

The cause of this perpetuity of generation is circular motion: for that is the only motion which is continuous. "... if there is to be movement... there must be something which initiates it; if there is to be movement always, there must always be something which initiates it; if the movement is to be continuous, what initiates it must be single, unmoved, ungenerated, and incapable of 'alteration'; and if the circular movements are more than one, their initiating causes must all of them, in spite of their plurality, be in some way subordinated to a single 'originative source'."

"...a thing is eternal if its 'being' is necessary: and if it is eternal, its 'being' is necessary. And if, therefore, the 'coming-to-be' of a thing is necessary, its 'coming-to-be' is eternal; and if eternal necessary.

"It follows that the coming-to-be of anything, if it is absolutely necessary, must be cyclical---i.e. must return upon itself....

"The result we have reached is logically concordant with the eternity of circular motion, i.e. the eternity of the revolution of the heavens."

I seize on a couple of statements here in particular, for instance, coming to be is an effort by grace to mirror the divine's eternal being by itself being a coming to be perpetually; he says a gift of God. And the idea put forth that generation being circular exhibits the characteristic of returning on itself echos the notion that the essential nature of consciousness shares the same trait.

So, the center, Earth, is where generation and corruption take place and the ultimate cause is bound up in, is made perceptible, by the circular movement of the fixed stars in the outer most sphere, that is, heaven. The abode of the imperishable and perfect affects all the coming to be and passing away we creatures suffer in the lowest regions, the Earth. The Sun is made to follow its alternating approach and retreat by the higher revolutions of the outermost sphere of fixed stars. It in turn imparts the necessity of generation and corruption to what is beneath its orbit. Aristotle further assigns decreasing powers to the elements both primary and simple being Earth, Air, Fire, Water which in their turn come and go in their own orbits alternatively creating and destroying what is within their purviews.

Next, De Anima

Creatrix Singularity

2011-05-13T18:21:00.000-07:00

If man, Jesus, is the Word made flesh, the machine as singularity is the daemonic embodied; an embodiment of the daemonic in nature. It is an elevation of the original sin to a machine, mechanistic principle. I give you Creatrix Singularity 60 by 50 inches, acrylic on canvas, art by Me, about 1970:

The feeling here is there won't be feeling, heart, warmth, and intuition to counterbalance reason if computational heuristics is promoted as the evolute of consciousness mediating life in the world to the disadvantage of organic based beings. Welcome to the cold calculus of an infinite regress of efficiency to worlds without end where under the umbrella of the Dyson swarm love, beauty, truth, wisdom, and most of all, liberty, shrivel and die.

If you'll look closely here you'll see the separation of the two isosceles triangles of the Star of David symbolizing man's supplanting with himself the cosmic apotheosis.

Nadi Shastras - Personal Notes from Readings by Prof. Desani

2011-05-13T18:07:00.000-07:00

This has been crossposted with an introduction at http://professordesani.blogspot.com/

Nadi Text, June 29, 1980

If there is only one religion, you will have a partial view of the world.

Treat all life as your own, small and large.

Nundi Deva and Shiva Yogi are the "speakers."

This text spoken before Buddha. Talks of Jainism, Buddhism before they appeared in the world and says one more religion will appear in Kaliyuga - Christianity.

The Lord incarnated, it said, as Buddha, Christ, Desani, etc. Eleven parts of the Lord.

Gives birth date, place, time, etc., parents, horoscope, of Buddha, Christ, Desani.

Of Christ, "He is Immanuel, Deva Kurna (sp.). There was a comet in the sky for three days. They fled to Egypt, to avoid edict of government....." His color is green, he is Love... "Twelve disciples, St. Paul wrote history."

Crucify: Prana left body, and they killed his physical body, Prana in Maya Svarupa (illusionary form) appears later. (He is risen.) He will appear in Maya Svarupa to some few devotees.

"After 1984 the people will get very angry. The government will do anything they want."

(aside: When you get angry evil beings get inside you. Buddha said if you control anger you could control the world...)

"Water will be bad, there will be bad gasses in the air, the food will be scarce."

"Why so many Shastras for Desaniman - 42? They are like God's treasures. Desaniman will know their purpose." (He gleans them for publishing.)

The five elements (Punja (sp) Bhutas are parts of Prakriti) are in the body. These perform their function, but they should receive proper help from the 6th sense, reason. Purity follows using 6th sense to control five elements.

(aside: Prakriti is conscious. This is the basis of magic.)

The same Tattvas do not apply to all religions.

"You are to control your mind and do Dhyana," then say, "Thy will be done."

If love of the lord is used for love of the self then it is not true Bhakti.

1983 - He might move to another country to avoid bad effect due to planetary positions. Might die in 8 years or 1988.

Prana/life and body are different from each other.

Sin and virtue go with Prana at time of death.

Atma (behind the body and Prana) is pleased by talk of Bhakti.

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Nadi reading July 5, 1980

Gives 36 Tattvas - essential things | Dance of the Lord

Shiva - Rudra (speaks)
Shiva Yogi is there - This being has been identified with Desaniman - they are the same being.

The body is Shakti, life is Prana.
The Lord lives in us always.

All things happen according to the will of the Lord, if you are a Bhakta.

If you have affections for others, you have affection for the Lord.

Anger causes early death.

We should do good for other Bhaktas.
Do not speak against anyone. It will act as a curse, a bad deed. Such deeds reduce Satguna (sp) in one. Do not use poisonous words against others. If our state of mind is at peace, others will be at peace..

Avoid making friendships, takes away from Bhakti.

Karma affects even the Gods, their deeds.

We should not delay doing our works, our good works.

Shiva is Prana. The Lord, preserver, creator, destroyer.

Keep Atma in Bhakti, keep Prana dedicated to the Lord. (Jivsamadhi, 24th dance (of the) Tattvas.)

Do not desire status, high position. Do not be hasty, if something does not come to a Bhakta then have an aversion for that.

Upadesha - instruction.

We must love our families.
The (red) Lord - destroyer.
If the Atma is not pure, the Lord will destroy it.

Our bodies are Shri Yantras. The Divine Lord, the Divine Father are in the heart.

In the 32d dance, the five recede to the first, radiance. If the 5 - Punja Bhutas - are controlled they become "friends."

Reduce salt, sour, hot, irritants, bitter: five elements reveal themselves as tastes, too.

Not too much sweetness.
Sweetness causes knowledge.

Anger is encouraged by hot (and meat), sour, salt, (but these) should be added in balance, then the kundalini does not get exaggerated, instead there is sukha, ease.

To avoid (or during) sickness due to imbalance of these tastes, take milk, and milk curds. Take these tastes occasionally with no harm, take without greed, take as blessing.

Instruction: Take food offered from Bhaktas, accept all, decline none.

_________________________________

Nadi reading November 29, 1980

#1 "He is 72 (DOB, Jul. 1, 1909) He is 'form of the Lord' "

#2 "Shiva Yogi is disciple of Nundi Deva. Shiva Yogi meditates in the Himalayas waiting for Desaniman to die, come to him."

Text instructs: "Guard against self worship!"

Text mentions: "Faults in the sun." - sunspots - or power from the sun.... "After 18 years (i.e., 1998) it will hit the earth at 'scattered points'. After this time " a handful of grain for one gold. People will eat leaves. In a given country if 50% of the people are Bhaktas, the country will survive."

Used in Puja: Cardamon and cloves
Text instructs: "Do not use powers - ever! Do not break any laws."

3rd text

"He (Desani) is disciple of Nundi Deva (and) also Patanjali, also Markande (sp). He, Nundi Deva, has five disciples. In all the nine continents there are very few Bhaktas. Desaniman wrote Shastras in all incarnations.

4th Text
Rudra and others speak in this text. Text says to Desani: "do not eat at night. May do Zen, Yoga, with no object. The Atma is like an abode of the Deva. If one speaks against Desani he loses his merits."
Text mentions Auro-Bindo, 83.
Text says: "Death is a great, peaceful being." "A good Bhakta worships with no expectation."

Offerings: Deepa (lights), Dupa (incense)

Spoken aside: "Do not build temple..."

Text says: "Nundi Deva has greatness of Rudra, myself.

Aside: Keep in mind the Yantra is a material form of the Deity: Prevents one from doing wrong things.

Text says: "In 1981 1/8th of population has Deva Bhakti."
Text instructs: "Should avoid bad people."

This Shastra was recited 5 - 10,000 hears past.
4th text ends thus: "Shibum, may peace be."

____________________________

Nadi readings Winter and Spring 1979 and 1980

Notes from 5 Nadi Texts G. V. Desani read to us.

Text instructs: "avoid over indulging 5 tastes: sweet, hot, sour, salt, irritants."

Text gives: The meritorious deeds: 1. To worship, to be mindful, meditate on the Lord. 2. To offer light to the Lord, e.g., night light burns always in (his) prayer room. 3. To help elderly person.

Text says: After 1984 (there is) much world trouble. At that time there will be a great meeting of great beings to decide the fate of the world. It will be like the end of the world.

Text says: "Bhaktas should guard against mistakes. The Guru will know, and advancement will be retarded...The power of the Guru accrues to the disciple in time...not necessarily in this life. It is the Bhakta's duty to renounce one article of food...To keep good health use nine grains, wheat, rice.....; meat eaters, including fish, should take extra water. To eat meat is permitted but it causes some trouble to the Bhakta. No greens at night. Greens can be taken four days a week; Peas two days a week. The nine grains are taken separately, not mixed. Take beans once a week. Take black beans (not available in U.S.) daily for strength. in worship offer fruit then take yourself as blessing."

Text says: If you want something, offer it. We should avoid cruel, wicked people.

Text says: In March, 1980 the force that was at the base of his (Desani's) spine will rise to the top of his head.

Text says: First there are two things (Personal note: Aristotle also concluded this): The Lord and the Prime Substance: Purusha and Prakriti. For the Lord, give up worldly pursuits. One should gather Puja things. We can follow any profession, just follow path of daily worship. Avoid politics.

Desani needs piece of lead and brass.

There are one or two cruel people - he rejects them.

Text says: "To each according to the quality of his worship." during Kali Kali (?Kali Yuga?) only one in one thousand will have love of the Lord." "From 1984 those who seek sexual gratification will suffer greatly." "There are many demons born as men now, they are the thieves, etc."

Text predicts: Acid rain, bad air, and so forth. Says some countries will be ruined by this. 1984 - 1989 (I'm not sure I took this down correctly) After 89 things will change again (maybe for) the better, somewhat.

Another text now - 6 in all today - I said 5 above (?) over a period of months.

It seems that Desani read to us for five hours straight.

Saturn periods come to everyone. (Note: Use intelligence during these Saturn periods to avoid injury, accidental death.

Another Text on future 10 years.

5085 = 1984: From then there will be bad troubles. Prices will increase, everything will be new, new level of evolution, times will see increase of knowledge in people of the world. Good grows with the bad. This text says to get Guru Bhakti, the five senses should be pure, (one should) speak truly, be moderate to get (have) the grace of the guru, to get divine strength.

"To each his own Karma. Thus we grow strong."

Saturn transit - November, 1978.

This text says to: "Treat the great light as the Lord. But he will appear in other forms too. Worship the feet of the Lord; that is, do not aspire for highness. When approached by the Lord, should he appear, get up! One should gesture supplication - hands together. Offer anything you are fond of."

"If you chant 108 times a day, that is good (enough)."

Aside: Mr. Pele (in India) types these texts. He is virtually blind. Mr. Murthi (also in India) translates. In a former life they helped Desani build shelters for pilgrims.

His text says: "To the Yogi, the benevolent look of the Lord is wealth, not gold, land, etc."

"It is natural to have some enemies. Leave it to the Lord. Some enemies are from former lives." (as are family members, wife, children, etc."

"Even bad people have some goodness in them," says the Lord benevolently.

"Each person who comes to Desani did so in former lives." Pele and Mr. Murthi helped (him) build shelters and asked to have their current role in this scheme (as typist and translator).

"The Deva says bad acts are his responsibility too, because they are 'in him'. Desani says, "this is very great of him."

"Desani talks only for a reason, not for gossip or 'passing time'. "

"Incline to the Lord and power comes. Never desire power or show it off for any reason."

"The Devil is a great fool; he can be fooled if you are clever."

"If there is less suffering in a country it is because of the people's intelligence, which follows from good deeds."

"He will give silver square to persons he owes debts to, people who helped him in former lives. This article stays in the 'Cottage of the Lord' for six months while he puts spirit in it. It is a Chakra. He should collect expenses for them. This Chakra will get them (the Bhaktas) divine wealth. Moreover, with the power of the Chakra the Bhakta will have a good life more or less free of the suffering of most people in these bad times."

"From the base of his spine the divine nerve has gone to the eye; it is time for it to go to the lotus at the top of the head."

"The rising of the moon is like the rising of the Kundalini. For Desani, in March, the rising of the Kundalini will be full."

Aside: "Confucius said death is a blessing as are all Universals."

"Desani will think that whatever comes to him is enough."

Pele and Murthi lived with him, helped him to construct shelters in a former life.

Aside: Desani says if you constantly give in to your appetites you merely serve the five elements.

"This is his fifth life. When he goes it will be like a Yogi leaving his Samadhi. His Prana goes to a tree in the Himalayas where Nundi Deva meditates. This being then rises and goes to a mountain....."

Desani says his guru told him to have a willed death.

"The body is our property, not us. It is to be controlled."

"Only because of the merit of Bhaktas, the Universe is not destroyed."

"The great beings will assume illusionary forms for a talk about the World's fate."

"A short person with six letters in his name will write against him in 1982, then come to him asking pardon."

"The Atma (Christian Conscience) will tell us it is not good to deceive. If we ignore it there will be untimely death. The voice of conscience causes guilt, which causes death."

guilt = death

This age is called Kaliyuga. Kali = iron "In 30 and in 100 years people (will be) are smarter, live longer. There will be much sensual gratification, but also Dhyana is being done.

The eighth dance of the Lord. Dance - Tattva

"At time of death the Prana leaves through one of nine doors (orifices). Then the Prana goes to Yama Puri (City of the Dead) to await rebirth. Full Yogis go to Parma Purusha (indestructible). His Prana can hence assume a living form at will."

-end of text-

New Text

"Some of Desani's disciples will publish Shastras too."

Text refers to following text.

-end of text'

New Text

I think this Shastra is the Devi speaking to the Lord of Wisdom. She is the Divine Mother. He has Elephant head.

Aside: "The Devi is different from the Lord, and eternal too."

To Desani: "Cut salt by half or three quarters."

Devi repeats that mentioned in first Shastra, "nine grains correspond to nine planets."

Aside: About 5000 years past only seven planets (circled the Sun). One split in two. Desani lived then too.

"Cut back on salt. Take fruits with grain if possible."

"Sickness follows if formal practice is not completed. If practice is begun (108) it must be completed. Offer fruit then have as a blessing."

"Desani is now 71. When he is 82 a person (name like a poison) will come to him. For no reason, in a former life, this person was an enemy. Desani is instructed to be friendly to him (by this Shastra)."

"Do not speak of siddhis. People will not understand; They will be confused, angry, etc."

"If offerings aren't available, do it mentally.... 'I make a flower of my life (or breath) and offer it to you' ".

End of Shastra

New Shastra

"A few more texts (are) to come."

Aside: Desani equates death and solitude. I think he said death and the Prana's being in Yama Puri is solitude. He said that (Milton or Blake ?) had what appeared to be a holy radiant being appear to him once when he was trying to conjure the Fiend. 'Go Away! It's not you I want,' he said. But lo!!! It WAS the Fiend."

End of this text

End of today's reading from the Nadi Shastras

________________________________

This text I didn't date

"In the beginning all people were Devas. Then they fell to lower Worlds."

"Desani's five lives were all in the Kaliyuga."

Aside: "Why is it (the World process) happening? It is a divine secret, a secret of the Lord. This creation is more man's than the Lord's, so to speak."

"It is very difficult to see the Lord these days. It is the times."

"1992 -1993 - fire hits planet."

"During a period when we suffer blows we are in a Saturn period and the Karma of past lives works itself. He warns to be very careful not to do additional wrongs. He says to do additional Bhakti then."

"He will not know who the bad people are who come to him."

"One should control one's mind. Live in the law. Do not show off divine wealth."

"There are Bhaktas who indulge (strong) desires, who have weak minds, who will, in their next lives have the same attachments."

"In that passage he calls them great Bhaktas, that is, with attainments."

Karma - inordinate desire
Lobha -greed
Krobgh - anger
Moha - (self love) attachment
Ahankara - pride

"There are four periods. The best are the longest. Together they are known as a great period. After (illegible word) have run there is total destruction."

"Desani was born in a 'special way' in each period."

Bhakti - act

"He reads texts because they help us."

Chakra - anything round.

end of this Shastra

__________________________________

Nadi reading June 21, 1980

Three texts today

Palas - effects

second text: "All conjectures by man about creation are false."

"After 1984 people over fifty (will have) eye problems. This and pain causes lack of sleep."

"Before going to sleep do worship of the Deva. Bow down to the Deva."

"To avoid bad effects during these years (one should) control Panca Bhutas (5 elements)."

"To use siddhis (powers) one must abandon compassion." Desani says it is better to live simply, not to abandon compassion.

sixth sense - mind

"The mind and the five elements control his (Desani's) appearance in illusionary form before Bhaktas. He does this by intention, and the appearance lasts for several seconds. He gives some words then goes."

"When we do wrong the soul/self will be troubled. This is conscience. Blows come to the body. That is, debts of Karma are paid by physical pain."

"If anyone says one scripture is right over the other, his mind will be affected."

"The 'third eye' opens at the Lord's pleasure."

"The four Vedas are held in a fist (silence)." *

"The Deva sits in the place of the Puja."

"One should have fear/awe in that presence."

"To deal with evil people or beings is a sin."

"Taking liquor and meat causes sickness. Those who do this cannot become good Bhaktas."

"After 1984 Desani will be like a 'new Yogi' in the world. He will be shown awe by all who meet him. He will be famous the world over. He has more Nadi texts than any other Yogi.

end of these 3 Shastras.

_______________________________

Nadi reading August 9, 1980

Recited by, or to (?) patron saint of Southern India.

21 years from now half of world's population will have love of God.
Half of world's population will be destroyed by then too.

One of the texts read today says he will make a sanctuary (for himself). Personal note by your writer: Myself, and Josh Farley, and Lynn Hough, and Allan Smith did subsequently add on a little room in the back of Blossom Burn's apartment into which he moved and for a period of some months followed a vow of total silence. During this time when I saw him he would 'speak' to me in sign language.

___________________________________

Nadi reading around August, 1982

Three texts read this day.

This year Saturn is in 8th house - no one can fight it. Mentions "spark from the sun" - destruction.

2nd text from Five Faced Lord: It is divine knowledge of God that grants us happiness.

Don't see or know a difference between dukha (difficulty or pain) and sukha (ease).

He says our purposes are wrong... (meaning the purposes of modern man)

Doctrines are not different (meaning doctrine of Shankarachariya (sp) and his detractors, I think)

Postures for exercises, he says, shouldn't be done by older people.

3rd text: Narada. In every period there are seven sages. Rule for Bhakti, 18 steps among which are to listen with pleasure, satisfaction, to words about things divine. To see temples. To recite mantras. To have images. To avoid over eating. Not to be in search of money. Not to be egotistical. To go the forest, solitude: this is the way ??? from world attachments. To conquer death (former merits are needed) then you're not affected by dissolution of Universe.

There are several kinds of Yoga.

Should not change mind.

Highest Yoga is to become one with supreme Lord. Then comes powers.

To BE the creator, destroyer, sustainer.

The people of the Kaliyuga can't understand the Upanishads. Desani said he's been 'yelling' this. Then the Nadi writer says, "some will understand when explained by the proper people."

Ages of man
four Ashrams - rooms?

6-25 learns all through Yoga/learns how at 6 years ???
25-50 householder
50-75 seeks solitude, goes into forest
75- attains sunyasi

They, the Nadi writers (in this) text, are having court, Sabha, assembly. One says, "will not the wealth of the divine knowledge be diminished by the telling of it?" "No, rather it will be increased," comes the answer.

One said Yogis could stop the coming disaster. He also said the people could stop it (since) it stems from "bad thoughts".

________________________________

Nadi reading April 18, 1981

The real powers of these Lords (the 3 forms - we have made the form!)

The Mantra's sound spreads through (to every) particle in the (one's) body. This is how the Punja Bhutas are controlled, for Sadhus.

Worship sitting - face North
Eating - face South
Don't face West - mind won't rest.

For Bhaktas. Assume particular posture. Plank, yellow cloth, maybe a chair. These procedures key the mind into religious mode.

Says to rise before dawn, do chores, then worship at dawn.

Manus - Lords

Before 1994 or 1998 (?) a great light falls on the people. This will shatter and go all over. Some call it a planet, meteor.

It is Lord's will. Good Bhaktas stay away from the (subject). Some will be saved.

Desani gets permission of the Lord to pass away. After death he still gives words, moves about in the world; he still helps people.

Recite/say Mantras to conquer demons in us.

Propunga - net

Many Manus, good people - are born now to help in these bad times.

"The Lord's grace is all. Mantra is all."

Light of the sun
If Bhakti increases destruction from light of the sun decreases. (I think he means on a planetary scale.)

What do we do?

Aside: "We weigh, we don't sell, buy. We weigh!"

* I'm reminded of Soren Kierkegaard who wrote that God stands before us with arms outstretched, hands closed. In one hand he offers the ultimate secrets to the Universe. In the other he holds the eternal searching for those. We should choose the eternal seeking and let God keep the greatest Truths, Wisdom, for himself. So says Kierkegaard.

De Caelo

2011-05-03T15:11:00.000-07:00

It is therefore evident that there is also no place or void or time outside the heaven. For in every place body can be present; and void is said to be that in which the presence of body, though not actual, is possible; and time is the number of movement. But in the absence of natural body there is no movement, and outside the heaven, as we have shown, body neither exists nor can come to exist. It is clear then that there is neither place, nor void, nor time, outside the heaven. Hence whatever is there, is of such a nature as not to occupy any place, nor does time age it; nor is there any change in any of the things which lie beyond the outermost motion; they continue through their entire duration unalterable and unmodified, living the best and most selfsufficient of lives. As a matter of fact, this word 'duration' possessed a divine significance for the ancients, for the fulfilment which includes the period of life of any creature, outside of which no natural development can fall, has been called its duration. On the same principle the fulfilment of the whole heaven, the fulfilment which includes all time and infinity, is 'duration'-a name based upon the fact that it is always-duration immortal and divine. From it derive the being and life which other things, some more or less articulately but others feebly, enjoy. So, too, in its discussions concerning the divine, popular philosophy often propounds the view that whatever is divine, whatever is primary and supreme, is necessarily unchangeable. This fact confirms what we have said. For there is nothing else stronger than it to move it-since that would mean more divine-and it has no defect and lacks none of its proper excellences. Its unceasing movement, then, is also reasonable, since everything ceases to move when it comes to its proper place, but the body whose path is the circle has one and the same place for starting-point and goal.

Aristotle, On The Heavens, Book I, Chapter 9

"...one and the same place for starting-point and goal." That's where we left off last time. "Arrive where you began and know the place for the first time." What jumps out at me in this summary of his thoughts on The Heavens at this point in the work; he goes on for three more books, is what I see as resonance with other religious and philosophical thought. To me it reads like the Bible, for instance, and also like the Bhagavad Gita. Saul, as Paul the apostle, traveled to Athens and stood on the ground that centuries before saw Plato, Socrates, Aristotle holding forth. Aristotle speaks above of the ancients while he himself walked the earth 300 years before Christ. Parmenides, Heraclitus, and Empedocles, among other philosophers referenced by Aristotle, lived as long ago as 500 B.C. Systematic philosophic systems of which the world's great religions have been the benefactor were developed very early. Though the Bhagavad Gita itself is relatively recent, maybe 300 B.C., the Mahabarata, of which it is a part, maybe an addendum, goes back over 3000 years B.C.; it cites astronomical events that date it at that time. Some think Christ preceded Paul in visiting Greece and that he traveled as far as India during the so-called lost years of Christ. The bible, as I understand, has nothing on 18 years of his life, from age twelve till he began his ministry about age 30. I rather imagine he did somehow seek out and make his own the wisdom of the ages. We should all follow his example.

Keeping things in true perspective remember that For Aristotle the Heavens consisted of the fixed stars which he thought as a whole circled the earth and was ungenerated, indestructible. Circular movement was thought of as characterizing the fifth element beyond earth, air, water, fire. It had no contrary, a contrary being necessary for decay. The earth was the center of the universe. All unconstrained movement below the orbit of the moon was either towards or away from the center, i.e., no circular movement was possible below the moon, the earth was not in heaven, but at rest, below. He also said the heavier an object the faster it fell. This cosmogony became part of the orthodoxy of the Christian church of Rome to be challenged at the risk of imprisonment or death. It was another great mind, Galeleo, born in 1564, who famously challenged this after having observed through his primitive telescope the orbiting moons of Jupiter. Until the so called Copernican revolution, however, this orthodoxy persisted. It's worth noting the neo-platonist, Plotinus, born 205 A.D., put it that the center of the universe was everywhere, the circumference nowhere, a poetic way of stating, I think, that this is outside the purview of mere human knowledge.

Aristotle thought the earth rather small because, he noted, one could travel the short distance to Egypt and the fixed stars would change. Some not seen in Greece would be seen in Egypt, or would be seen to set and rise whereas they didn't at the higher lattitude. He also concluded the earth was a sphere based mainly on the observation of the curve of the limb of the planet seen in eclipses of the moon. And he is credited with having been the first to record the predictions (of unnamed) mathemeticians of the size of the earth which he placed at 400,000 stadia, about 46,250 miles. Later, using the fact that the sun shone directly to the bottom of a well in Aswan (old Syene), and cast a shadow of a certain length in Alexandria on the same day, the summer solstice, Eratosthenes, born 276 B.C., calculated the circumference of the earth to be 25,000 miles.

A perfect, eternal, heaven above naturally becomes the Christian destination for saved souls. The corrupt earth is split off and shunned. This obvious false dichotomy of the good above, evil below, is the root and stem of a profound western malaise. Like the spires of our great cathedrals yearning, longing for the heavens, we seek completion in a realm beyond being reached. We split the Real in two yet maintain dogmatically the oneness of God. This is our schizophrenia and is at the heart of our self loathing and is an expression of the smug certainty of ignorance by the minds that followed Aristotle, encoded his 'scientific' thoughts into a code of conduct to be imposed on all mankind. To this day it still dominates the lives of most people on the planet whether they actively believe or not. And, this is all the more sad because the esoteric teachings of the ancients across the world tend to agree and for those who truly seek, the Christ also gave us real truth, his life being the story of God descending into matter in order to reemerge a self realized spiritual being.

Here is something to contrast with this. Sean Carroll, Theoretical Physicist, Caltech. Transcript here. H/T, American Digest. Video:

At about 17 minutes he says different versions of the universe are really like different phases of matter, speaking of the multiverse theory.

So. "God" plants a field and gets, along with a successful crop, some mutants too. Not every instantiation yields what I imagine is the goal, sentient life of the apotheosis kind. Some versions of the universe might not yield life at all. Interesting to note that the ancients in India held that the universe is created again and again without end.

Next up, Aristotle's On Generation and Corruption and after that, on The Soul.

Interlude for TEOTWAWKI

2011-04-07T16:21:00.000-07:00

"The end of the world as we know it" is a myth chased by people who need something to believe in; a desire for something greater than their little selves. There has always been a great hunger for apocalypse. Eschatology is the most popular 'science' and religions are it's greatest beneficiaries. For instance, the 2nd coming of Christ, the eternal waiting for the Mesiah, the imminent emergence of the 12th Imman. One comes from above, the last from the bowels of the Earth, and the middle we haven't yet seen. That is the way of Christians, Jews, Muslims. In the East, he is sent forth again and again as needed, when there is a waning of love of God which is the view most correct, I think.

Principle: Self loathing is at the root of fascination with apocalyptic dreams. Essentially it is the yearning for self destruction.

This goes all the way back to the so called 'original sin' which in a way can be thought of as the first lesson in self loathing. Compare Soren Kierkegaard's "Concept of Dread". What is dread without the "r"? The search or desire for salvation is also a function of need for self annihilation. Kill the little self to realise God. This makes for a life of passion. It perverts the true meaning and purpose of existence by arresting development at the level of the sensuous, as in Don Juanism, and in reality is the mode of living of the daemonic in nature. It is antithetical to true faith and to reason. The existential daemonic mode of being is infinite desire or longing where being whole or complete resides infinitely in the next sensuous moment always and ever on the horizon as a goal but never reached. True faith is the opposite state of Being, always and ever complete. One needn't dread not being saved or dead to the Real because of the unworthiness that infinitely precipitates self loathing. Salvation is, once accepted, notice I don't say achieved, a state that should be seen as an end that when we arrive we see as the beginning, seen for the first time. We arrive at where we started and recognise it for the first time. That, of course, is T.S. Eliot. Salvation can't be achieved. It can only be accepted. We should focus on this promise of the divine: "Lo, I am with you always, even unto the ends of the world."

Walking Through Aristotle

2011-03-24T07:28:00.000-07:00

I'm through with Physics and into On The Heavens. In Physics he concludes there is no actual (separate) infinite; infinity is bound up in potentiality. The first principles [of Reality] are contraries and are at least two in number but no more than three. There is the first movent, itself unmovable, having no parts nor magnitude, bound with the moved, and eternal. Only circular locomotion is infinite. Nothing rests in a moment and nothing is moved in a moment either as a moment is indivisible. This follows because whatever moves is divisible. Only the sensible can be altered.

This is no true summary of the Physics but that is not my purpose. First, I'm not really capable of such a task. My personal journey through these thoughts is just that. Personal. I seek touchstones, places that resonate with my thought, faith, understanding. It is a rich field and there is more than I could ever write down.

Powers of nature, principles, manifest when the right conditions arise. Darkness calls (contrary) light out of itself. Light is a potency of the dark. This is the Greek idea of Logos and is also rendered "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was God, and the Word was with God.” Logos refers to fundamental powers, principles, that have the ability to manifest themselves. The "light" in question is not mere self propagating magnetic fields, "physical" light. This is light as Idea and includes moral light, the light of truth, of understanding, of justice, and beauty. Perhaps all the concomitants of consciousness are a form of "light", powers of nature on a par with gravity. Doesn't Liberty shine forth an attractive force? Aren't we drawn to liberty as well as faith? We want to believe because we want to align with basic principles of nature, as if we had a choice. We want to reside in the Logos. I wrote elsewhere that the entelechy of potentiality is actuality. Truth is an eternal potency and eternally actualizing itself. The other concomitants are the same. "We", sentient life forms, created being(s), are the agency of this apotheosis and our "spirits" are in eternal motion, orbit, around the Divine Creative Spirit. Similarly, gravity holds planets in orbit around their stars.

Even our breathing follows the law of contraries. Nothing is closer to us than our breath. The law of contraries coupled with the law of potentialities means things familiar, such as the bilateral symmetry of biological organisms. The ramification of this is that any organism on any planet anywhere would likely be surprisingly familiar.* But also, this law would tend to mean, for instance, that whatever abominable monstrous evil one might imagine will eventuate somewhere, sometime. On the contrary, benevolent goodness and beauty beyond the ken of man will also come to be; beauty so terrible in its greatness that it is withheld from us because to look on it with mortal eyes would be to die.

That is Aristotle, my personal take thus far.

Finally, for today, in On the Heavens he begins by remarking on the trinitarian theme prevalent in nature. To have being in every respect is, he says, to be a body, not a line, not a plane, and it is only triads that we can refer to as all, not one, not both, but all. Referring to the Pythagoreans he notes that "the world and all in it is determined by the number three, since beginning and middle and end give the number of an 'all', and the number they give is the triad. And so, having taken these three from nature as (so to speak) laws of it, we make further use of the number three in the worship of the Gods." Protagoras was speaking of the Holy Trinity 500 years before Christ. Touchstone.

*Preserved here: "We know that mathematics are consistent throughout the Universe, and that physics is based on math and is also consistent throughout the Universe. We also know that the chemistry, which is based on physics and math is also consistent throughout the Universe. Since the math and the physics and the chemistry are consistent, it seems logical to assume that the biology of the Universe - which is based on the math, physics and chemistry - is also consistent. For example, consistent optics, derived from the physical principles of light interacting with gases and liquids, would lead to similar eyes. Consistent atmospheres with the same gases would lead to similar lungs and gills. The symmetry (left/right) of most physiques optimizes balance and control within a gravitational field, so physical laws point to similar physiological constructs. I think when we do finally encounter other life we (well, not me, you) will be startled at how similar to our own it is. Mother nature is consistent and her laws lead to the same outcome everywhere when applied locally, so it seems logically consistent that biological life will follow suit globally. Except, of course, that the people on all those other planets will all have strange foreheads. " (See Jim's comment at 9:59 a.m. at the jump)

Finger Pointing at the Moon

2011-01-24T13:26:00.000-08:00

In the Physics Aristotle analyzes motion at length and at one point gets to how in the soul motion pertains to knowledge and understanding. "And the original acquisition of knowledge is not a becoming or an alteration: for the terms 'knowing' and 'understanding' imply that the intellect has reached a state of rest and come to a standstill, and there is no becoming that leads to a state of rest.... for the possession of understanding and knowledge is produced by the soul's settling down out of restlessness natural to it."

Words alone do not suffice to reveal the truth. They can take us to a jumping off point, but the true discovery begins at the boundary of language's ability to express the absolute. The thought processes are pointers but when we turn away from them it is in silence that truth is born, blossoms. I'm led to make a comparison to a old Zen Yoga precept. It has been noted in these pages before that "nothing can be said that can do more for enlightenment than what a finger pointing at the moon can do for seeing the moon." Seeing the moon is not a "becoming or an alteration." It occurs intuitively and if one focuses only on the pointers the moon never appears. Knowledge and understanding stand in the same relation to their pointers, thoughts, words, formulas, rituals, and rites. Many who deal in these mere signs on the path claim a direct pipeline to G_d. They should avoid self righteousness, the smug certainty of ignorance that finds the views of others contemptible.

Categories or Modes of Being versus Concomitants of Consciousness

2011-01-01T05:28:00.000-08:00

The modes of being as written about here are, as Kierkegaard thought, Stages on Life's Way. The primitive man, the primitive mind, tends toward artistic expression and develops into religious, scientific, historical, and finally philosophical modes. I find it interesting to contrast this with the concurrent emergence of what I call the concomitants of consciousness and sentient life forms. Beauty, liberty, love, justice, wisdom, truth all have special niches of development corresponding to the Stages. They come into season and prepare the way for further seasonal changes. To me, and to thinkers like, e.g., Le Compte De Nouy, also written about in this space, these evolutes are proof enough to the doubting mind that divine providence is in play. They are, indeed, signposts along the avenue, the "way" to the transcendent. They are attributes of the divine creative spirit vouchsafed to us as evidence of the true meaning and purpose of life. So, since I am concentrating these days on Aristotle, I would note that these modalities considered extensively, as noted previously, by Collingwood, I find echoed in this statement of Aristotle in Posterior Analytics: "Further consideration of modes of thinking and their distribution under the heads of discursive thought, intuition, science, art, practical wisdom, and metaphysical thinking, belongs rather partly to natural science, partly to moral philosophy."

Consider this quote from Plato's Phaedrus:

"Now beauty [kállos], as we said, shone bright among those visions, and in this world below we apprehend it through the clearest of our senses, clear and resplendent. For sight is the keenest of the physical senses, though wisdom is not seen by it -- how passionate would be our desire for it, if such a clear image of wisdom were granted as would come through sight -- and the same is true of the other beloved objects; but beauty alone has this privilege, to be most clearly seen and most lovely of them all."

And this from Kelley Ross on Aristotle and Kant regarding the role of faith versus reason:

"The picture of the relationship of rational knowledge to existence that emerges is just the opposite of that postulated by Plato and Aristotle, who believed that the most real was the most knowable. Here, the deeper that we get ontologically, and so the closer to the most real, the less knowable, or the less it can be rationally articulated, the matter is. This is the principal characteristic of Kantian philosophy. In the simplest terms, what this accomplishes is to separate religion from science, the former most concerned with ultimate meaning, the latter the most productive of rational knowledge. Thus, Kant himself said, "I have therefore found it necessary to deny knowledge, in order to make room for faith."

Plato in speaking of beauty, wisdom, and "other beloved objects" is touching on the Greek concept of virtue (arete). Virtue is the genus of these emergent principles which, like the bud of the rose, foreshadow greater unfolding, apotheosis, to come. Socrates argues inconclusively and at length with the great Sophist Protagoras in the Platonic dialogue of the same name whether virtue is teachable and is in the end sentenced to death for exercising corrupting influences on the youth of Athens. Jesus Christ, of course, suffered a similar fate.

It seems to me Kant's statement that to make room for faith one must deny knowledge echoes a sentiment of Aristotle noted earlier that knowledge is always knowledge of something. This is from his Categories. He goes on, in Posterior Analytics, to conclude "....we cannot through demonstration have unqualified but only hypothetical science of anything." This further echoes Kant and supports the idea of Polanyi, for instance, that knowledge always breaks down as we approach the boundaries of a subject. Can knowledge exhaust the Real? Aristotle goes on a little later to state "...scientific knowledge through demonstration is impossible unless a man knows the primary immediate premises." And then, he concludes in P.A., after bringing the function of memory and sense perception into play, and their retention in the soul, that we must "...get to know the primary premises by induction; for the method by which even sense-perception implants the universal is inductive. Now of the thinking states by which we grasp truth, some are unfailingly true, others admit of error - opinion, for instance, and calculation, whereas scientific knowing and intuition are always true: further, no other kind of thought except intuition is more accurate than scientific knowledge, whereas primary premises are more knowable than demonstrations, and all scientific knowledge is discursive. From these considerations it follows that there will be no scientific knowledge of primary premises, and since except intuition nothing can be truer than scientific knowledge, it will be intuition that apprehends the primary premises - a result which also follows from the fact that demonstration cannot be the originative source of demonstration, nor, consequently, scientific knowledge of scientific knowledge. If, therefore, it is the only other kind of true thinking except scientific knowing, intuition will be the originative source of scientific knowledge. And the originative source of science grasps the original basic premise, while science as a whole is similarly related as originative source to the whole body of fact."

So, the Real can be exhausted, by Intuitive knowledge. But reason alone deals only with facts, what can be measured scientifically. And the atheist, quite simply, denies intuition, denies the Soul and is thereby, in the end, dead to himself, dead to the world.

Unkempt Thoughts

2010-12-02T13:07:00.000-08:00

Got that title from Stanislaw J. Lec.

Walking out on the road today, the leaves were falling and skittering along the ground in the cold north wind. I remembered something I read or heard once that a flower is just a modified leaf. It occurred to me that a leaf was a modified branch, trunk, root. It further occurred to me that Virtue, Truth, Justice, Beauty, Wisdom, Liberty, Love, Consciousness itself, Life itself, were all just modified dirt which in turn is just modified hydrogen which itself is just the most simple thing that can be made of nothingness itself.

I'm still reading Aristotle these days and probably will be for a long time. I'll likely have more to say about this great philosopher in the days ahead. I studied him in University; but not really. For someone like me such a study is a life long endeavor.

On a side note NASA announced today they had discovered microorganisms that are "able to thrive and reproduce using the toxic chemical arsenic." Why am I not surprised? Please let me know when a sentient life form is found based on this chemistry that has an appreciation of the above listed concomitants on a level with Human Beings. I am sure "they" are out there. For all I know the Sun itself is teeming with "living" entities. That is, my argument is that the WHOLE thing is an Apotheosis.

Aristotle

2010-10-28T17:00:00.000-07:00

Reading Aristotle, Organon, De Interpretatione is like reading computer code at the machine level, the code, e.g., in CMOS. Not that there aren't nuggets that jump out at me, like, "knowledge is always knowledge of some thing." Knowledge is limited to what is perceptible. Perceptible means that which is delivered by the five senses. This precept is well known and it dovetails nicely with Protagoras' "man is the measure of all things," also. It is the basic tenet of my epistemology.

He goes on to the conclusion "...that necessity and its absence are the initial principles of existence and non-existence, and that all else must be posterior to these." He then states "It is plain from what has been said that that which is of necessity is actual. Thus, if that which is eternal is prior, actuality also is prior to potentiality." I think he is in this building up to his later concept of entelechy which doctrine I have adapted to my own philosophy and have written of previously in this space. I have an idea that the Universe is infinitely malleable, which idea, I think, has its roots in the principles stated here. My notion that the Real is akin to a fractal, I think, is also bound up in these concepts. It is infinitely self-inventing, and every instantiation increases and enriches the pregnancy for ensuing evolution. All that will ever be is already actual in the "beginning" even though all that will ever be is an elaboration on the infinite stream of prior instances. Every new instance is a new beginning and a new boundary for the new. Every new instantiation is an elaboration of its predecessor. And, our heavens are self made as are our hells. It's all about individual responsibility and self-reliance. Belief in nothing gets you just that.

Here it all is in the language of mathematics:

Original Sin

2010-10-24T14:47:00.000-07:00

Genesis. They ate of the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil. This was forbidden them. What does it mean? The original sin is putting knowledge above faith. Man's knowledge is his alone and is limited and incomplete. A wise man is full of doubt and in that way keeps an open mind. The fool projects himself, and incidentally closes his mind, on the whole of creation; he takes the place of God. The bigger fool claims ownership of God, of the creative force or principle. Atheism is such a claim. It is the projection of the finite onto the infinite. While the whole of creation might be a kind of apotheosis, this can go horribly wrong. The beginning of true understanding is realizing that knowledge is always limited, always dependent on anthropomorphic modes of measurement. The biblical "knowledge that surpasseth understanding" is a way of stating this principle. It is got to by going into the "upper room." In another tradition, Raja Yoga, this meditative practice is described as focusing the breath between the eyebrows. What results is the discovery, ultimately an action of the unknown, that the "kingdom of heaven is within you." It is not a destination. And, the journey IS the destination. The journey IS the apotheosis, the transfiguration of existential mass into self-realized spirit. One might say that we exist so that "God" can have self experience. When we live within the guidance of virtue, Greek arete, our lives are conducive to its various components, such as beauty, truth, wisdom, courage, compassion, liberty, and love. These are like petals of a flower; the flowering of self-realized spirit. The end within, entelechy, is endless, the universe infinitely malleable. If you believe in nothing, that's likely what you'll get. Faith is the key. Knowledge without understanding is the bondage.

Link to interesting discussion regarding Hawking and G_d

2010-09-05T17:25:00.000-07:00

One of my comments in this thread.

From the Bhagavad Gita

2010-08-21T13:09:00.000-07:00

"Their soul is warped with selfish desires, and their heaven is a selfish desire. They have prayers for pleasures and power...."

The Fall of Mind-Reason

2010-06-28T08:08:00.000-07:00

Usually it is because we are to close to something that we can't see it. So the problem becomes, for instance, how to distance oneself from reality. To Know the Real you can't be the Real. If you are what you would know then you're stuck with tautologies. From self identification (1=1) no knowledge is available. It conveys no information. Isn't it interesting that nonetheless understanding is available. Everything that is begins and ends with our body consciousness. Hard to break out of this. That is why in ancient Greece, for instance, we have Protagoras proclaiming that man is the measure of all things. On the basis of this it seems to me that the supreme good is taking responsibility, ownership of one's life. In a sense, then, to own yourself is to own it all.

Unkempt Musing

2010-06-23T09:01:00.000-07:00

What exists does so in space and time. 'Things' exist. God does not. He's not a thing, though most conceive him as such. They are 'things.' God must be too. Anthropomorphism. God does not exist, he creates.* His Reality is only available through faith. No faith. No God. For the denier of faith only the body exists, that which is our material self. This also helps explain the fall from grace.

*Soren Kierkegaard

The Measure of all Things

2010-05-31T14:10:00.000-07:00

The ancient Greek philosopher Protagoras famously said man is the measure of all things. This is in essence the heart of my previous post here. I would elaborate a little. We tend to project our being as an "object" in the world onto the whole of reality. So reason pertains only to the material aspect, principle. When Blaise Pascal , the great Christian philosopher of the seventeenth century, said "The heart has its reasons which reason can never know" he is saying that the heart is the faculty of spirit and operates through intuition. Clearly he places heart above. Spirit over matter. When we "give" attributes to God, for instance, we might say, "God loves me", we are projecting our humanity onto the whole of creation. That's fine but we need to have a full understanding that this is in actuality a form of self aggrandizement which I take to be the essence of the "fall" from Grace in the Christian sense. Isn't it better to just "wait" on the deity? I, personally, can't arrogate the status to myself that God loves me. My DUTY is to LOVE him! Then, I wait. This is a touch on infinite resignation, the task achieved by Abraham in the primordial act of faith as described when he takes his son Isaac to the mountain as a sacrifice.

I think with the ancient Greeks that the force of nature we call Love was created BY God for man as a means through which there could be commerce between the Creator and the created. In this sense, the essence of true love is to wait without expectation. To assert "God loves me" obviates that essence by pushing the "Me" to the front. This is my personal approach, not for everyone, except maybe to consider. I believe to love the Deity is a safe and sure path to take through this life whether one cares to examine or not the infinity of nuance available. The principle that the Universe is infinitely malleable, another overriding belief of mine, would see the emergence of a divine spirit that does indeed love man, if that is what man intends.

Heaven's not a destination

2010-05-24T06:31:00.000-07:00

A message for my Christian friends.

To think of heaven as a place we go when we die is to cast the hereafter in the light of our being as humans. Our measure of things is based naturally in our physical presence in the world. Anthropomorphism. This works fine except when it is applied to the whole universe. Friends, this IS the "promised land". You've got it all. Yet you want it all. That is kind of crazy, you know? You think you are not complete until you live a good life and die then go beyond to a place of paradise, a heaven? All dichotomies such as this are false. I have to tell you. Heaven is within, it is not a destination. We speak of it as such in order to have it fit our knowledge of our bodies, our being in the world as created entities. If you manage to muddle through and finally reach this place you will turn in wonder and have to admit to yourself, "why, this is the very place I started from. In fact, it is where I have been all along!" All that's necessary is to cut through the veil of illusion and you can see this anytime, anywhere. Because it is like a sphere whose center is everywhere, whose boundary is nowhere. Don't take the metaphor for the Real. Own yourself! In that you will own the whole by default.

Existential Angst - Continued

2010-04-26T16:50:00.000-07:00

Notes from September, 2009

Soren Kierkegaard. Reading of Gretall's Anthology, Pg. 231 (postscript) "God does not think, he creates. God does not exist. He is eternal."

Existence and eternality are polar opposites. Creation can only occur from the eternal perspective. Potentiality, then, is integral to eternality itself. Also, eternality is that by which we can grasp existence in the first place, in the same way "darkness" is that condition by which there can be light. Unless we witness the created from an eternal perspective it is a constant source of confusion. The self-centered person has lost the eternal perspective. That IS the "fall" from "grace". It is Materialism, the lot of the Narcissist, the Solipsist. It is to identify with the body instead of the spirit.

The despair is that we cannot know God. Such sorrow as would shame the abyss. We struggle out of this primordial matter to look on a creation the full purpose and meaning of which is ever just beyond our grasp. We close our fist on it only to open our hand to the revelation of....nothing. Completion is only found in the understanding one can never know (God). The transfiguration of sorrow and despair to faith is the infinite resignation to this reality. Only through inwardness do we arrive at this juncture. Not Art, not Science, nor History, especially not speculative Philosophy, and not dogmatic Religion. All of these "endeavors" of man, categories of being in the world, posit truth in an absolute other. And, I agree, Truth is vested in an absolute other, but not like man projects otherness. The absolute other is the repository for all that our understanding approaches but can never quite achieve. That is why the "leap" of faith is required to "realize" ultimate meaning and purpose.

Clove Hitch

2010-04-22T17:15:00.000-07:00

That knot is a clove hitch. I wonder if it was invented during that period of the age of sailing ships, 1500s through the 1600s, that saw the opening of sea lanes from Portugal, Spain, Holland, France, and England to the "Spiceries", The Moluccas, the Banda Islands, Neira, Run, and so forth. Whatever the history it is a very clever knot, a highly nuanced bit of technology. Suppose I said to you, mariner, we need a knot that no matter how hard we strain it, it is as easily untied as tied. The "clove" hitch is the answer.

Winter 2009

2010-03-14T14:51:00.000-07:00

Who says it never snows in Central Texas? Well it almost never. The last time this happened was winter 1984. It snowed almost all day and some of the "flakes" were as big as golf balls. Real wet snow and just barely freezing though a week or so ago it got down to ten degrees, the coldest in 14 years but I remember when it got down to 8 one winter. Of course, you might know, we get a lot more ice storms than snow. I guess it averages about one ice storm per winter, about. So, snow here is a big deal.

The deck had snow for three days but most of it was gone in two.

Cedar tree near gate

Winter rye grass and the pond

Looking East from top of hill

Looking South

Looking Southwest

Looking West

I had a dream

2010-03-11T08:28:00.000-08:00

Really I had a whole series of dreams. The recurring dream was of construction activity to the East and North of my property and always involved trespassers. No matter what measures I took in these dreams I couldn't keep the people out. They would drive right through my yard and I'd chase them through the woods. Sometimes I'd grab a firearm and then chase them. I must have had 20 or more of these dreams over a period of ten years at least.

Well it finally came true. They are building a new high tension power line a few hundred yards from my place. It comes from the North and passes me by to the East, heading South. There is a lot of noise, chain saws, drilling machines, caterpillars, air compressors. Also, they have been on the property. I looked out my window, having heard a "vehicle" noise very close, and some guy on an ATV was tooling very fast right through the yard. Previously I'd heard what sounded like a pickup over by my barn. OK, this is it, I thought. What the hell is going on? I chased the guy down. He was looking for power poles. He was getting a GPS fix on every one and labeling as he went. No big deal. But I did take a pistol in the back seat of the truck when I ran after him.

It was a little later I realised those dreams had been prescient. That is a big deal. This has happened to me several times. Dreaming about future events. Interesting. What is time that this can occur?

2009-12-04T17:35:00.000-08:00

I had the honor of serving in this regiment. I was a Sergeant in charge of a 106 MM Recoiless Rifle. That is the badge of the Second Infantry Regiment. I still have this badge. As I write this I am wearing it. I have stories about those days I like to tell on occasion. That was some gun! Like! You know! The jeep would seem to come off the ground when you fired it. Anti tank weapon, of course! Primarily.

Freda's Bar

2009-09-08T08:18:00.001-07:00

It's easy to make things happen. What's hard is making them turn out the way you'd wish. Once the first shot is fired there is no telling what will pass. It will certainly be interesting, however.

As soon as we got back from our outing I was getting ready, shower, shave, and so forth, for another evening out. It was about seven when I headed out for the Dew Drop Inn. That place being about as dead as a doornail I went to town and lighted at the West Glacier Bar also known as Freda's. It was not busy at that hour but I had no trouble finding people to talk to. Everyone in sight was younger than me by far. I ordered a scotch and soda. Arthur, the bartender, was friendly. There were only a couple of people at the bar. Arthur was in his 30s I guess and said he had bartended all over the world. He specifically mentioned Okinawa and Sudan, but that is about all the details I got from him. He charged me $2.50 for the drink. I told him that was a good deal. I was looking around, checking people and things out, getting my game going. I read the labels on the tap beer pulls. One of them was organic. I laughed at this and asked if they had any in-organic beer. The guy to my right chuckled and said all beer was organic as far as he was concerned. I laughed and toasted him with here's to in-organic beer! He responded to my toast it was all star dust anyhow, no kidding, which gained him a rousing affirmative from me.

Right away I noticed that there was more going on on the front porch of the bar than inside so after this little exchange I moved to the bench just outside the door. The porch was small with the bench being just outside the door on the left. It might hold three people comfortably. There was a guy sitting there on the end away from the door. I took the position next to the door which pleased me because there were two very lovely young ladies sitting on the other side of the door on the floor of the porch. They were facing each other and speaking in some European language, I could not quite make it out. I knew it wasn't German, Spanish, French, or Dutch. About this time my companion on the bench started talking on the phone. I didn't know what he was speaking either. After he got off the phone I asked him if it was Czech. He said no, Russian. Introducing myself I said, well, welcome to my country. He smiled and said he was American. I said he sounded fluent in his Russian. He said he had been an interpreter for the U.S. Army, had gone to their language school. His name was Kurt and we discussed European and Russian geo-politics for a moment. About this time I also struck up a conversation with another patron. Her name slips my mind but she was from New Zealand. You can see her standing in the door in this picture.

During this small stretch of time I met several people. One young fellow was from San Angelo, Texas where I went to high school. His family were ranchers, had a 2300 acre spread out there. He and I talked about the drought plaguing Texas at the time and how it was causing people in the cattle business to sell off their herds. The couple in the foreground with the girl leaning against the post were early arrivals. I was sitting on the bench with Kurt when they showed up. He shook hands with all the guys in our little group and she got hugs from everyone, so I knew everybody here knew everybody else, just about. I was one of the few outsiders. Turns out all these people were either employees of the park service, the businesses hereabouts, or tourists that were staying for weeks or months instead of days like me. It was a most interesting group of people. Just a bunch of well to do twenty somethings enjoying the good times that go with being young and attractive and far away from home.

The lady from New Zealand. I asked her to sit and Kurt and I made room for her between us. Turns out she was a chemical engineer and ran her own company. She had about seven employees and was traveling on holiday with some neutered guy. I met him and shaking hands was like grabbing hold of a dead fish. Yuck! Someone told me, probably Kurt, that he thought he might be gay which prompted me to ask New Zealand girl whether she liked men. This question was put at the end of the evening, of course, and she didn't like it, so that ended our contact. Meanwhile we had talked at length about pest problems in NZ from rabbits to deer, and how to deal with them. You see there are no natural predators there so when the King of England brought some deer so he would have something to hunt he created a huge problem for subsequent generations since, I guess, hunting is now not politically correct there.

After a bit I turned to the two girls sitting on the floor on the other side of the door and asked them what language they were speaking. It was Norwegian. As we exchanged names, Tina Marie and Heidi, I slid to the floor beside them. They asked New Zealand lady to join us but she went inside the bar. Tina Marie and Heidi were working on their masters thesis with the park service on some kind of exchange program but were having trouble with their "supervisor". Improper touching. They were considering quitting which I encouraged them not to do. Tina Marie had, she proclaimed loudly, hitchhiked all over south America. Both girls were quite drunk but just in the best of moods imaginable. Just before I sat down another guy had joined them. He introduced himself as Sean but he left within a few minutes. I think I scared him off. Or, he wanted to play this field himself without competition. I talked to these most delightful girls for an hour or so. It was the highlight of my trip. I have seldom run across people like these. Eventually, drunk as a skunk, I invited myself to take them back to their place. We all three climbed on the K bike, Heidi on the luggage rack, Tina Marie right between us. Of course I got some pictures. New Zealand girlfriend took these.

There was some trepidation on their part, and mine too, about the safety of this operation. They asked me if it was safe. I said, well, let's sit on the bike and see how it feels, OK? It felt fine and no sooner had we maneuvered out of the parking area onto the highway than Tina Marie tightened her arms around me and yelled at the top of her considerable lungs "Pedal-to-the-Metal". I obliged, leaning as far forward as I could to compensate for Heidi being so far back on the bike. I was afraid of doing a "wheely" under that condition but both wheels gratefully stayed on the ground. This is a very powerful bike and they got the ride of their life. I rapidly overshot the turn and had to cross a bridge and make turnaround at which point Tina Marie louder than the first time, gripping me for all she was worth, shouted "PEDAL-TO-THE-METAL", in her Norwegian accent. I don't know whether Heidi chimed in or not it was so loud, but I could hear both of them screaming, hooting, hollering with peals of laughter and joy. What a ride it was turning out to be. This time I made the turn, and the drama was repeated. All of this was in sight and ear-shot of Freda's, so we were putting on a show for the patrons which I am sure they enjoyed. I gave the engine full throttle and it screamed louder than all of us together as I redlined the tachometer at 8,000 RPM. Very quickly, way too soon for me, I could have done this all night, we came to their driveway. I couldn't get invited in because there were other people there, they said. Would I come see them tomorrow in another town to which their duties would take them? No, but I have much enjoyed being friends with you for this all too brief period, I told them. We embraced, kissed, exchanged email addresses, and spoke of the profound meaning of life. I used the Star of David meme for this, me sitting on the bike, them huddled close in the gloaming night to see the diagram I made on a matchbook using the bikes fuel tank for a table. Tina Marie Nagel. Heidi. I will love you forever. I am your knight in shining armour and whenever I sit astride my steed of steel my mind goes to your hearts and pulls them back into orbit around mine.

Going to the Sun Highway

2009-09-08T07:27:00.000-07:00

Monday August 18, 2009
The three of us headed out about nine a.m. The trip lasted all day seeing us back at the camp about four p.m. and included lunch of hamburgers in Babbs, MT. The Going to the Sun road is 50 miles long and stretches from West Glacier to St. Mary, Montana reaching an elevation of just under 7000 feet at Logan's pass. This is Lake McDonald being one of the first attractions on the route. The video above is McDonald falls and is just at the East end of the lake. Pat took this picture and the video.

Pat was really taken with the pretty rocks. This is her picture too. Gary and I were skipping rocks across the lake meanwhile but we got no pictures of that.

The fee per vehicle to take this ride is $25. Pretty steep, I thought, but it was very crowded. Too crowded in my opinion; not that they should raise the fee more. I think they should not charge fees at all. It is public land after all.

I took these two pictures the first being a glaciated valley and the second is what is left of some old glaciers. You can click on these images of mine to get a much larger view.

West Glacier, Montana

2009-08-31T08:01:00.000-07:00

On August 16, Sunday, we went for morning worship to the St. John's Lutheran Church in Great Falls. It was only about a mile from the RV park and we chose it because it was the first church we saw. It was rather a small sanctuary and it was full. The pastor, Steve Nelson, gave a sermon on this the 11th Sunday after Pentecost on the theme "To eat and drink what gives wisdom and God's life." There was communion and it seemed to me everyone partook. We were uplifted by this fitting break from our daily routines to give a little back to our heavenly father.

Monday morning, not too bright and early, we packed up the house, as Gary likes to call it, and headed out, with me following on the bike, for the 192 mile trip to West Glacier. The rains that had plagued us off and on for the past few days had cleared out and the weather was simply perfect with mild temperatures and clear blue skies as far as the eye could see across the Montana prairies. The mountains to the West were in the near distance, just far enough away to take on a greyish tinge. We stayed parallel to these till we got even, more or less, with West Glacier, then we headed West. Along the way we stopped at a rest area that as it turns out was the same one Gary and I stopped at on our trip to Alaska a few years ago. That brought back some memories. It was from here that Gary decided to take me up on the offer to trade jobs. He would ride the bike for awhile and I would drive his rig. Pat took the video above of him on my bike.

We saw some buffalo on the way.

We set up the RV in the West Glacier camp ground just a mile from the entrance to the park itself. Here is a picture of Gary and Pat.

And this is the view out the back picture window.

I went to get some gas for the bike as soon as we set up. It was about five p.m. The gas station was back in West Glacier, which, I should say is a postage stamp of a town. A restaurant, a general store, a bar, a gas station. That's about it. It has one intersection on highway 2, you turn left on the Going to the Sun Highway, and blink your eyes, and you are through the town. This afternoon there were a lot of people hanging around and I took the opportunity to talk to some of them. I spotted the West Glacier Bar for later reference. It was across the street from the gas station. Afterwards I went for a ride back towards the RV park and on past a mile or so. One guy at the campground had said there was a bar out that way a little and I wanted to check it out.

The Dew Drop Inn, said to be the place you could take in some local color, had a fruit stand on the same property right out on the highway. I went there first and sampled and bought some cherries and huckleberry syrup. The cherries were the best I ever had and the propriotor, he gave his name as huckleberry, was friendly enough. I asked him abou the Dew Drop and he said it was the only bar he would frequent, but he didn't drink, and he avoided my questions as to how lively it got in the evenings. At this time there was no one there, so I didn't go in since it was too early anyhow. I checked it out at seven p.m. and there was still no one there so I went back to the West Glacier bar.

Iron Pine Club

2009-08-27T11:45:00.001-07:00

I was up early Saturday. It was August 15. Nice thing about not getting wasted in bars is you can live a normal life the next day. That is why I observe strict limits on my alcohol intake. A gibbous moon was hanging in the Eastern sky, dogged by a giant planet. It was fairly clear but later the clouds rolled in again and it rained. But, hey! It's Saturday. I am on vacation and there are lots of opportunities to pursue. I wanted to make something new happen and I knew how to do it.

I was putting on some socks the other day and it happens that when I undid the pair from their little stuff bundle they were both wrong-side out. This never happens and it made me think. How many times did I have to perform this operation to get an unexpected result? A great many. What if I accelerated the process, spent all day every day folding and unfolding? What kind of population of socks would I have to look at to find an anomaly? It is like growing maize you see. Drive down a country road and look at the maize fields. Millions of plants, all uniform. Except every now and then, maybe one in 500,000, you will see a mutant. These can be much taller than their peers; that's one way to identify them. My mission on this trip has been to create such a population of events that something unexpected will happen. After all why seed the heavens with 100 billion galaxies if you weren't looking for the unexpected? This principle runs through it all. So, that's why I went so far out of my way to engage people. Sometimes I don't do this being satisfied to be a rock, an island. The song says a rock feels no pain, an island never cries. Well, of course they do, though it might just be as a potentiality. It is still there. I had this conversation in the car with Gary and Pat on our way up to Fort Benton yesterday and from their reaction I am sure that I needed to just shut up and keep my own counsel close to myself, so to speak, where it is appreciated. Smile. So, with that in mind, when evening came, though I was a little tired, I mounted my iron steed and set out yet again for parts unknown in down-town Great Falls, Montana.

I rode around a bit after getting there. It was somewhat cold at 7:30 P.M., but there were a few people around. I pulled up next to a guy crossing the street and asked him whether there might be a decent bar in the neighbourhood. He directed me over a block and back towards the river a couple more to the Iron Pine Club.

As I was parking the bike, speaking of the unexpected, my son called to check up on me and to remind me that his baby was due in two days. We talked for a few minutes while I went inside and took off my riding coat and helmet. Then, I went to the bar and took a seat next to a couple of guys. The bar was not at all busy and wouldn't be anything like the experience I had the previous evening at the Sip and Dip.

These two guys were talking about being stopped by police and how to resist when they wanted to search the vehicle. Since I have some experience, from the law enforcement side, of this kind of scenario it was easy to join the conversation. The guy on my immediate left and I quickly settled that issue and launched into a far ranging discussion of topics from battle space monitored by satellite communications to the readiness of our nuclear deterrent. There are a lot of missiles in silos in Montana and his job had to do with their readiness. He was Air Force, and about to get out and go back to his home in one of the Carolinas. I really liked him, and he me. He said he'd never met anyone like me before. Couldn't believe that I knew so much about almost everything. Wouldn't let me go, so I had one extra drink. Off on the subject of women, he is married, he wanted to hook me up with a Shanna or Holley who worked in a "massage" parlour a couple of blocks away. Gave me their phone number, told me how to get to the place, and even tried to call them himself, but got a voice mail, of which I was glad. I didn't want to hurt his feelings but no way I was going to use a hooker. There are better ways to get something unexpected, if you take my meaning. Anyhow, he said I'd be in like flint if I would just tell them Scott sent me. This was an interesting counterpoint to what had gone before to say the least. I didn't elicit this offering. It just sprang up. I guess it was an instance of necessity being the mother of invention. You figure it out. At any rate, in a very few days, I would truly strike pure gold. But so sadly, alas, a fortelling, I could not stake a claim, though I tried. I tried hard....

Some of my exchange with Scott needed illustration and I kept the napkin with our doodles on it as a keepsake. It has the Star of David on it. We talked about religion. It has a "battle space" on it with a satellite high overhead. It has the gibbous moon being dogged by a star, because he didn't know what dogging the moon meant. It has the name of the massage parlor, the girls names, the phone numbers, and a bunch of other stuff, front and back. When it came time for me to really go he gave me a pass to Glacier National Park he said he wouldn't be needing, and when I went to shake his hand he pulled me into an embrace. It felt right. Two human beings, a random encounter, souls mixed, we part feeling like we somehow in the space of time it takes to drink two or three scotch and sodas, probably twice that many for Scott, came as two people and left as one. Sad I will never see him again. He was really hungry for the kind of exchange we had and I felt very good about having opened my heart and soul to him. A question springs to mind. What IS going on here? I do see a pattern emerging, but I daren't touch to heavily for fear it will dissolve.

Once again, on my way out, I took some pictures. The one at the top is the bartender. His name is Kyle Vogel. He didn't know that Vogel meant bird in German. I looked at him real hard and asked him who he looked like that I might know, an actor, I said. He said Leonardo DiCaprio. I said, yes! That's it, you really do. He smiled real proud. I told him I didn't particularly care for the guy but that he was a decent actor. He agreed he didn't like him much either. I said that I'd bet the girls hung off him like ornaments. He laughed, then I shook his hand as the picture was taken. I think he overheard a lot of Scott's conversation with me and I regret as I write this not having brought him into the discussion.

This picture is of the guy who was concerned about getting his car searched. I took it because of the ear thing, which he pulled out and reinserted for me. Cute.

And this is his sister. She is married, but nice and friendly and didn't flinch a bit when I kissed her as her brother took the picture. I got her email and sent her a copy, but she hasn't written me back. Sad but expected. But, hey! I am just planting seeds here. The surprise will have to come later. The population is not nearly big enough yet.

Sip and Dip Tavern

2009-08-26T12:40:00.000-07:00

Well, it's been a long day. Time to unwind. I asked around back at camp where a good local watering hole could be found. The camp host marked a spot on the map for me. It was down-town, in the O'Haire Motor Inn. The Sip and Dip.

The main bar faces two large glass windows which look in on the Inn's swimming pool. I am told one or two swimmers will appear in awhile wearing some kind of mermaid costume. I want pictures.

There is a guy and his wife to my right. I pick up conversation with them. They are from South Carolina. He used to live here and says, no kidding, that he has seen people, guests of the hotel, have sex right there in front of the crowd in the bar. It seems that, at that time at least, people in the pool didn't know they were being watched. I guess they didn't notice the large glass panels in the wall of the pool. Anyhow, I take this with a grain of salt, but he was dead serious and I even heard him repeat it to a couple of other people that came and went. One of these was a guy in coveralls fresh in from his job. He walked up to the bar next to me and asked in a very Southern accent whether this was the world famous Sip and Dip club. I announced it was and momentarily passed him off to my expert friend on the right. Turns out this new fellow was from Louisiana and was living up here working as a welder for awhile.

The bar got very crowded. It was loud and the air buzzed with conversations. Only one mermaid showed up. It wasn't a disappointment. The real show was on the floor of the bar.

That is Beckie. I heard some guy address her as a he. I wasn't similarly confused. She has a very sweet, high pitched voice. I got her to sign a book of matches for a souvenir for me. She wrote, "Best Wishes, Beckie". I asked her about the guy that misjudged her gender and she said it happens once in awhile but that it doesn't bother her. I'll bet this fellow was embarassed when he heard her speak. I said she did look like she could hurt me and she laughed and the other bartender who overheard this exchange said she was a sweetheart and wouldn't harm a fly.

This is what was pushing me from behind. I got friendly with these belly dancers as I was leaving. I'd had my allotted three scotches at about $3.00 each, and no cover either. You gotta love that, for less than $20 I had this great evening. Anyhow belly dancers and I kidded around a few minutes, especially me and the one on my right arm. I teased her mercilessly about how her boobs were about to pop out. She lapped it up. Real hungry. Ended up she did a little belly dance for me. We had a great laugh.

And this fine lady plays the piano while at the same time with her feet she plays an organ. She is 80 years old.

When I arrived at the Sip and Dip it had been raining. And it was probably in the 50s with a North wind. Leaving it was still wet, but barely drizzling. I had a lot of fun at the club in spite of the somewhat inclement weather for a biker. But the best fun was showing these pictures to my brother the next morning.

Fort Benton, Montana

2009-08-25T13:03:00.000-07:00

Friday morning, August 14, we drove a few miles north to Montana's birthplace, Fort Benton.

Here is what the river looks like just down stream from the fort. I saw paintings of Indians standing on bluffs overlooking the river at a similar place taking shots at steamboats passing by.

This is the Grand Union Hotel. It was built in 1882 and restored in 1999. I sure wanted to stay here but that will have to wait till the next trip.

This is the lobby.

This picture hangs next to the desk. It is Chief Plenty Coups. He was named chief of the Mountain Crow at age 28. At this time I had met Emily, the desk clerk, and my quip to her was that the haircut was still popular.

This is the hotel bar. That is Emily. She told me the original bar has been removed to a bar in Missoula, Montana.

Emily is Emily Bley pronounced Bligh. She said she had a famous last name but couldn't tell me who the original Bligh was. I recall a certain Capt. Bligh, but couldn't relate the history to her. Emily signed her name to a hotel business card for me. She was very nice and since the hotel was anything but busy gave me a walking tour of the ground floor. On a personal note she told me, and my brother and his wife, who had been shopping across the street at a kiosk run by some local Hetterites, about a proposal of marriage she received from a sixteen year old from this "clan". She was of an age with the boy and was manning a stall her dad had set up selling wares from his operation, I don't recall what exactly. The Hetterites are like the Amish. They wear distinctive dress and the like. So, he walks up to her booth and asks if he could please see her father. She asked why and he said he would like to ask for her hand in marriage. When she refused him the interview with her father the boy went away but came back a little later with his father, to strengthen his suit. I noted that this is exactly how such a transacton would have taken place in the 1700s.

Here is a frontal shot of the original (restored) Ft. Benton. Note the rifle slits.

I wish this had come out better.

The bull stands almost six feet at the shoulders and would have weighed about 2200 pounds. This grouping was originally gathered by the great conservationist William T. Hornady and were originally displayed in the Smithsonian in 1887 when it was feared the great bison would soon be extinct. We saw bison on this trip, grazing alongside the road near Glacier Nat'l Park.

A grizzly. Seems intent on something.

This is what he is concerned about, but not too much, I expect.

We visited a couple of old churches.

Our trip ended with a ride across the Missouri river on a ferry. We took the back roads back to Great Falls passing section after section of wheat stubble with an occasional uncut field in between.

No mention of Fort Benton, Montana would be complete without bringing in the story of the world famous dog, Shep. A Sheepherder's body was shipped back East for burial back in August, 1936. His dog witnessed this and every train arrival for five years till Shep himself was killed by a train saw him watching and waiting for the return of his master. It is a profoundly sad story, of course. Though I had heard of Shep, I didn't realise I was at the source of the story till I got there. An old guy I met on the bridge there over the Missouri river, now for walking only, made reference to it. His name is Gail, funny name for a man, he agreed (I asked him if it was spelled Gayle because one of my best high-school friends carried that name). Gail used to be superintendent of schools in Fort Benton. I wanted to share this sentimental and profound testament to love, to awakening spiritual awareness. It speaks volumes that a dog would display sentiments that we arrogate exclusively to ourselves as humans. And obviously, if you are inclined to such musings, it fills in a blank space in that template we might all be trying to grasp that could it be seen clearly would carry the meaning and purpose of life itself.

Great Falls Montana

2009-08-24T09:31:00.000-07:00

I was glad to finally end my ride and my brother and his wife feted me with leftover chicken casserole which set very well as I had been living off snack food all day. This is the Malstrom Air Force Base RV park and would serve as home for the next few days. I didn't do anything the first evening, just relaxed and enjoyed visiting with my family.

These are the great falls for which the city is named. I imagine this rages wildly with snow melt if seen at the right time of year. They do have it damned up here and they use the surplus runoff to generate electricity at this damn.

This tells how in 1805 Lewis and Clark made a portage around these falls.

We visited this Veteran's Memorial nearby. It was a beautiful place.

I was taken with this statue. The doves being released reminded me of a funeral service I participated in a while back in which white doves were released by the next of kin of a serviceman killed in Iraq. He is holding several dog tags in his right hand that you can't see in this picture. I found this very touching.

Cheyenne to Great Falls

2009-08-24T07:18:00.001-07:00

It is now Thursday, August 13. Yesterday it was in the 90s. Last night and this morning it was much cooler. I put on my heavy coat for this ride and before the day was out I was fully suited up for wet and cold weather. The dry Texas summer was far behind me and it felt real good to plunge heedlessly without a care into the infinite asphalt and steel ribbon before me, the road north to Great Falls, Montana. That is 682 miles.

I-25 was just outside my door so it was a fast getaway out of Cheyenne. The bike screamed at the distance and it melted in submission to the dauntless intrepidity of this bike and rider. I was the can-do kid this morning, ready for whatever this day had to offer up. It was bright and sunny all the way north through Wyoming. I shed the coat about 10 a.m. Not far after I took this picture I was passing through Hardin, Montana. The Battle of Little Big Horn, also known as, Custer's Last Stand, took place near here. You can see the grave markers from the highway. I stopped at a nearby rest area and when I came out of the rest room an Indian man of an age with me had laid out his display of Indian jewelry on the grass. I picked out a nice necklace. He was Navajo and we talked for a minute about his work and about my travels. He was a real nice man and I liked him. I thought his work pretty nice. I picked this up for fifteen dollars. When I got home Kristi was quite taken with it. She is very parsimonious about handing me compliments, but I got one for my good taste for this selection.

Here I am at the border.

Click on this to view larger image and note the stickers people have climbed up here to apply. You can see this sign has been shot up a little with a rifle and a shotgun. A couple of the rounds seemed to have come in from a great angle indicating the shooter was probably way off to the east somewhere.

When I got to Billings I left the interstate to take a hundred mile shorter route to Great Falls through Lewiston. After Lewiston there was a construction zone, the worst one of the trip. There was a lot of deep very loose gravel and an occasional fist sized or larger rock. Not fun at all to ride through. It was about this time that it clouded over and I ran smack into a cold front. So, it's in the upper 40s, it's raining, the wind is blowing, the road is slick and muddy, and, on top of all that, it is like rush hour traffic in Dallas on this two lane road. Am I having fun yet? But, you know, if you want fine highways you have to take the occasional construction zone. We are blessed to have these paths. Like any other path, I intend to see where it leads.

This picture's subject is the green fields. That yellowish field on the right is winter wheat, still not ready for harvest, though by and large most of the wheat fields I saw had been harvested.

I just wanted to get this picture of the clouds rolling in. That is a pretty big mountain in the distance, it's peaks shrouded in the cloud layer. It is really a lot darker than it seems from this rendition. It was serious gloaming out that afternoon.

This is the view west where I stopped to put on my cold/wet weather gear. It started raining almost immediately and continued till, well, for the next few days, off and on. I got my left hand in the frame here. That is not a pink cloud bank, or at least that is not how I recall it.

The photo does not do this justice. Click to enlarge. That inner rainbow actually went across the whole sky, horizon to horizon.

Wichita to Cheyenne

2009-08-24T06:04:00.000-07:00

Interstate 80 here has a 75 MPH speed limit. Kansas is 70. You would think that 5 miles per hour would make little difference but it does. The bike and I want to go much faster anyhow, at least a hundred, but I think I can get away with about 78 so that is what I set it on. The traffic is moderate and I park it in the left lane for the most part because the right lane is more or less owned by the truckers whom I pass by the hundreds. I only know of one time that I got clocked by a state trooper. Construction zones came up a few times but were not too much of trouble. It is 609 miles from Wichita to Cheyenne. That is a pretty fair ride and it was in the mid 90s I guess. The wind was strong out of the south making the bike tack a little to the left as I attacked the distance. My brother and his wife were camping in their RV in Cheyenne I thought and it was my intention to visit them. They didn't know I was coming so when I got to Sidney, Nebraska I stopped for gas and called to let them know my intentions. They had moved that day to Helena, Montana. I was pretty tired so I thought I would just stay in Sidney so I checked out a few places but they wanted more than I was willing to pay. Motel six was about a hundred dollars. No way was I going to do that. Sidney is where Cabella's outfitters has their headquarters. I think that is why the rooms are so expensive. So I mounted up again after wasting an hour in a fruitless search and headed again into the westering sun.

Arriving in Cheyenne about four in the afternoon I cruised the main drag looking for a good place to overnight and eventually ended up at the Roadway Inn near I-25 on the west side of town. Here again as I was checking in I asked the desk clerk about a good place to have a drink that evening. She told me I should check out the Outlaw saloon just south of I-80 near down-town. After taking a shower and working a little on my equipment and gear I headed out at sunset for the Outlaw Saloon.

The Outlaw bar is country/western and there too I found some motorcycles. Parking next to these you could hear and see a band with the volume cranked way up. There was a patio there and an indoor/outdoor bar where I ordered a scotch and soda from the very tall and stout female bartender. The club was almost empty and what people there were were concentrated on the patio which was fairly pleasant in the early evening air. The best part about it was the music was at a little distance. It was too loud. Four ladies shared the bar with me. They were maybe in their late fifties. As I walked across the patio I locked eyes with an attractive brunette who was maybe 35 or so. I caught her looking at me. We exchanged greetings and she went to her table where she joined a small group. I took a place at the end of the bar leaving a space between me and the ladies.

Once I got served I walked around the patio, checking things out. A lone dancer, a guy, was whirling and jumping on the dance floor in something he no doubt thought was a dance. I thought it was the dance equivalent of the visual artist who is unconscious of the fact that his rendering of his profound vision is tantamount to a baby discovering he can play in the stuff in his diaper.

I turned away from the music putting my back to the bar. About that time a guy approached me from my right. I could see a name tag on his shirt that said "staff". He asked me if I knew the time saying he didn't have a watch. I had my left hand in my pocket. His time query was just a ruse so he could see the back of my left hand because when I pulled it out he said, glancing at my hand that I needed a stamp there. This bar had a cover charge. He said I needed to go pay so and so lady across the way five bucks. I said no thanks, that I would just leave instead. I didn't like the way he handled me. I didn't know there was a cover but, never mind. I didn't particularly like the place anyhow.

I rode the mile or so down town and parked in front of the Plains hotel. I love this place. It is a 1911 period piece. I walked through the lobby following the path of all those people who came before. There weren't but a couple of people around the lobby besides the doorman and a lone desk clerk. I wanted to go to the bar but I was also interested in staying the night at some point so I got the price. About $100. The bar was pretty active with a lot of people eating at their tables. There were two women at one end and a guy with the biggest black felt cow boy hat one is likely to run across. The bar was a beautiful piece of sculpted wood. It was dark coloured, but not too dark. You just wanted to touch it, rub on it. I sat down leaving one seat between me and the guy in the big hat. No sooner did I settle down than he warmly introduced himself as Don. I said my name is John. He said Don John. That's easy to remember. I laughed. I ordered my second scotch and soda for the evening at the same time greeting the bartender. He was pretty nice. His name was Artie and he drove a Budweiser beer truck for his day job. I commented on how many pounds he lifted per day and his retort was that it was tons not pounds. I thought he might be working his way through college but he said he wasn't in school at the time.

Meanwhile Don and I are talking too. He is actually a frequent guest of the hotel. Works for Makita, the tool people. He is of an age with me and we hit it off pretty well because he was also a fan of BMW motorcycles. He used to have an R90/6, he said. A 1974. I have a 76. These are fine machines. He said he made a twenty thousand dollar bet with a guy once on a race to New York City. His friend was a Harley guy. He lost. His bike broke down several times on the trek, but not the Beemer

We had a pretty good little party. I also talked a little across the bar to the two women on the end, when I could interject a quip, and the girl to my right, when her boy friend would absent himself for a moment, I engaged also. I thought they left once and when they came back she told me they had gone out to smoke. This gave me a chance to loudly declaim that the world must be truly changing because I was sure that the smoking Nazis would never find success in Wyoming of all places.

I turned over 100,000 miles today.

Cool picture of bike from my balcony. I took this the morning of my departure for Great Falls.

Austin to Wichita August 11

2009-08-16T14:50:00.000-07:00

It's Tuesday morning. I've been thinking about this trip for months but could never commit because of pending issues at home, and in my heart. I can't write about the biggest thing going on in my life. Know that I am dragging around a ball and chain on my feet, and Monday I had a long standing appointment. With it over I was free as I wanted to be. I went to bed Monday not knowing what I would do. I was restless as I have ever been. It felt wrong to go. It felt wrong to stay. I needed to shake something loose no matter what. Introduce some chaos into life's stream. If you want your situation to mutate into the unexpected then get up and go and meet life head on. I had done all I could do about the unnamed affair, all to no avail. I cried all my tears and lived for weeks as if my increasingly shriveled heart would fix itself. Ah, that organ, so sensitive, so easily ruined, so in need of renewal. Tuesday morning my waking thought was, OK, let's get it done. Do something even if it is wrong. We are going to leave all this behind and maybe nothing good will happen. But at least I can still make something happen. If you want a new form of life you have to plant a lot of seeds in order to get one mutation. So, as I had my morning coffee I packed up the "K" bike and by seven thirty I was heading down my driveway to I didn't quite know where. I got on I-35 near Walburg, Texas and joining the stream of humanity heading north, hiding there in my helmet, I flew along the macadam of the interstate highway as fast as I thought I could get away with. As it turns out this is the same path I took in June. I had a notion, more or less, that I would ride till four in the afternoon.

It is 515 miles to Wichita, Kansas. The cities rose up out of the plains and swallowed me up and spit me out the other side. Waco, Fort Worth, Denton, Norman, Oklahoma City, Edmund, and finally, at four P.M., Wichita, Kansas loomed on the horizon. It was hot and sunny all day. I was glad to be at a stopping place.

I stayed in the Scotchman Inn on Kellogg Avenue just west of downtown. While checking in I asked the clerk where I could find a tavern nearby and after I unpacked the bike and showered and changed into street clothes I headed out. West avenue was just over the river only a mile or so back towards town from my Inn. It was real cluttered with suburban blight but I found Yvie's bar and grill. There were two Harley's sitting by the front door and several cars. I backed my beemer in next to the Harleys. Some guy went in ahead of me carrying a fancy cue stick case. I went in and took a seat at the bar. There were several pool tables. Two middle aged ladies were standing at the bar. They ordered some beers and went to play pool at the nearest table. I sat down at the bar and when the bartender asked me what I wanted I ordered Dewars and soda. On my left were two empty stools. On my right a guy was drinking beer. I didn't talk to him and thought about moving over one seat to put some space between us as I intuited he didn't really want me there.

I sipped my scotch and minded my own business and watched the other happenings in the bar. The barkeep was a woman in her thirtys maybe and she was real busy. I don't think they had anyone else helping except in the kitchen so she not only served drinks but also waited tables, serving food and drink. The place wasn't full but I don't think there were any tables completely empty either. She was busy. I just nursed my drink, bided my time, ignored the guy to my right as much as possible. He was trying clumsily to chat up the bartender and she was friendly in a businesslike fashion. So, nothing really happened. I had a drink and it slaked my thirst and cut through all the dirt and grime in my mouth, in my mind, accumulated riding the trail from near Austin, Texas to Wichita, Kansas. When my glass was empty the girl presented herself in front of me and asked if I wanted another. I looked at her, locked eyes with her, put a friendly look on my face, waited to the count of four, and said I would be leaving. She said, "OK, then that will be five dollars." Looking into her face still I said, as I reached for my wallet,, "what is your name?" "Angie," she said. Handing her a ten dollar bill and a one I said, "Give me back a five, keep the dollar for a tip." She went to the cash drawer and fished a five out and came back to me. I had meantime collected a book of matches with the name of the bar printed on the cover. "Angie,", I said, "sign your name on this for me." She smiled, and said, "Oh, you collect matchbooks?" "Well, no," I said. The guy on the right was intent on this exchange, I could tell, but he kept his distance. Looking at her signature, I said, "I might start a collection." She smiled as I put the five back in my wallet and got up from the bar stool. We exchanged pleasantries, "good bye, have a nice evening." As I turned to go I spke to the back of the guy's head sitting there on my right and said, "and you too, man." He still didn't acknowledge me and almost cringed, I thought, as I walked out the door. So, the first seed successfully planted.

I went back to the Scotchman and checked the bike over for tomorrow's run. My gear was in need of some reorganization because in my haste to get on the road I just stuffed things anywhere. After a bit of this I turned in and slept fitfully till about six thirty Wednesday morning. By seven thirty I was in the lobby where I grabbed some cream cheese and preserves to go with my bread for a snack on the road.

An elderly couple were having cereal. We exchanged greetings. I didn't sit down. Obama was on the TV. It was a news clip about the health care debate. I addressed the couple about the AARP and how they were for this but that a lot of our seniors were beginning finally to see that this would adversely affect their lives and were strongly coming out against it. I don't know how politically aware these folks were but they listened politely neither agreeing or no as I said my peice. That too was a seed planted.

It was a nice day, still cool, when I mounted up and headed out for Nebraska straight up I-35. But in a few hours it was in the mid 90s with a south west wind. The prairie rolled up under my spinning wheels and the vast regions of my mind likewise rolled up behind my rapidly advancing thoughts and feelings. Heart and soul, mind and body were one in purpose and intent. I only stopped for fuel and one rest area where I had a snack about mid day. I got to York, Nebraska, where Interstate 80 headed me due west across southern Nebraska. It was hot when I stopped there for fuel. I struck up a conversation with an attractive girl at the fuel island. She was headed for Chicago and had come from the direction in which I was going. I asked about road conditions and such just wanting to hear a human voice and especially hers. She was quite open and didn't object to this chance meeting. Finishing up our fueling we parted wishing one another safe trips.

Entelechy

2009-08-09T16:45:00.000-07:00

What is the end within? The end within a rose bud is a rose. An acorn becomes an Oak tree. The end within. Blow this up. All things have an end within. A purpose. How can you say that there is no purpose to creation as a whole when you must realise that the rose bud is a manifestation of what is going on on the grand scale? If a rose bud's purpose is to display the rose within, then the purpose of the cosmos is presumed to be a very real, a very live, thing. You, your life, is that end within. You are the rose. Get over it!

This is Aristotle via me.

Existentialism

2009-08-09T07:33:00.000-07:00

Existentialism: Ex nihil, nihil fit. Out of nothing comes nothing. That is what I reject, and, well, the real purpose of this sentiment is to provide an indulgence for the subject. It makes no more sense than saying out of everything comes everything. It is a mere tautology, its only possible reference is back on itself. Therefore it conveys no meaning. It is like living in the sentiment that existence, that life, is nothing but a flight from the alone TO the alone. I reject that, too.

Note re equality tards

2009-07-17T17:50:00.000-07:00

In a closed system, such as the Cosmos, the Universe,
If there is light and dark, eventually that which is dark merges with that which is light and you have neither dark nor light. If there is hot and cold, the same formula applies. If there is organised and chaotic, the same. That is the second law of thermodynamics. That is immutable. Dead stop!

Strange jump! The equality tards seek to accelerate this process. Don't they know it means death?
So, the struggle between liberty and statism is the struggle against entropy on the political level.

Nuff said!

Business as usual

2009-07-16T07:14:00.001-07:00

I went for a bicycle ride early this morning. You have to get out early to beat the heat this July. On my way back I could see coming down a hill that two Labrador Retrievers were nosing around in the corner of a maize field ahead. I knew these dogs to be aggressive. Across the road, with his back to me, was a Great Dane. I'd tangled with all of them before. I hoped to sneak by them but just as I got within twenty feet or so of one of the Labs, my movement, noise, caught her attention, and she turned on me. I went straight for her, she ran off across the road and I made my turn left. The second my back was to her she charged. The other Lab was close too and the Dane, old as he was, was gallomping his self hard to get in on the action. The first, then the second, Lab, got a taste of my right foot. I popped both of them in the nose real hard. My knee was fully cocked when I let fly. They peeled off and fell back and I jumped on the pedals, outdistancing them. I could hear and see the Dane out of the corner of my left eye. His huge nails scraping on the asphalt added a funny kind of staccato background to the deep throated rumbling that he issued for a bark.

Meanwhile, up ahead, a pickup swerved in order to run over a large snake. I pulled up and these two guys, young construction workers, watched this corn snake in its death throes. I asked one guy who got out to take a picture, to stomp his head. Put the creature out of its misery, you know. He ignored me, concentrating on his cell phone camera. The driver said there was a board in the back. It was a two by four about four feet long. I stradddled the thing and bludgeoned its head to a pulp and wished all a good day as we parted company. It was friendly. Just three guys having a chance encounter over the death of a feared reptile.

Its not easy losing the love of your life and then getting attacked by a pack of dogs and then having to put a snake out of its misery.

After what I have gone through in the past two weeks I thought this was somehow a double bad omen. And, last night, I dreamed of rats.

Oblivion

2009-07-05T16:50:00.000-07:00

Isn't oblivion where I came from? Isn't oblivion our greatest fear? So. We fear our origin? Passing into that great unknown the idea of not being remembered haunts us. We fear not having anything to cling to. We want order to reign, not chaos. The whole thrust of our being seems to be to stave off entropy. Abhorrent dissolution! This is the fiendish chain that binds us and this in a way is liberties opposite.

Liberty is a universal, a principle. That something is a principle means it is a force. Love, as principle, posits love as force...of nature, on a par with gravity. The same holds for all concomitants of sentient life. Always there are forbears who have struggled with these eternal verities, trying to see a clear path through an absolutely impossible maze.

Reading of Soren Kieerkegaard for instance: The soul is like a channel that opens into the sea. The closer to the sea the wider the channel. The boundaries of the individual soul increasingly dissolve as the "channel" merges with the sea. On meditation the personal soul resolves into the spirit of God, the cosmic soul. This is true transcendence and is not available to those trapped in subject/object modes of being. Those that have consigned their spirits to a "having" existence as opposed to "being". Freedom is in being in the world. Slavery is in having objects in the world, in mere materialism.

The tone of this is that the sea is the repository of great joy, which I think is true, but for most of the lives of most people this great all encompassing sea is the abyss, the void that swallows up all purpose and meaning. It is oblivion, chaos, entropy. We have vehicles for coping with this and to follow that path the abyss becomes full not empty.

Faith is a vehicle for coping with our seeming estrangement from the real itself. Guilt is this same estrangement from reality. The Christ teaches us that there is a way out. Jesus said I am the way, the light, and no man cometh to the Father except by me. Here he is disembodying himself. He identifies with the "Way" to God and with the "Light" itself which illuminates this path. So, the way to God and the light shining thereon are principles too, and Jesus Christ was a living embodiment of those. In other times and other places, across the entire Cosmos, other beings live that also give a living body to these same universals. Isn't it a necessary truth that there are many "Christs"?

Just wanted to get that off my mind.

Travel Log

2009-06-14T06:56:00.000-07:00

I had been working on the "K" bike for over a week. The steering head bearings needed replacing and the windscreen function had to be repaired. I wrapped this up on June 5 and packed up my stuff and left for a trip north on Saturday, June 6, 2009. It had been pretty hot with temps in the low 90s and on day one that held true for my entire run straight up I-35. I made it to Wichita, Kansas the first day. The wind was at my back the whole day. I think it was gusting at least 30-40 MPH so you can imagine I got real good gas mileage. I stayed in a Days Inn near down town Wichita. I had stopped at several motels and all the desk clerks had been Indian or, who knows, Pakistani, so I kept going. These were cheap places, or should have been, but I have a distinct aversion to motels run by middle easterners and try to avoid them. But, of course, you have to take what's available and when the clerk at the Days Inn turned out to be Indian I just threw in the towel and paid his exorbitant rate of $62 plus tax. The next morning I passed a Motel 6 displaying a rate of $40. It was all of three blocks further down the road.

I have, in the past, stayed in lots of hotels/motels with Middle eastern, mostly Indian, hosts. I recall one in Houston, I think it was a Hampton Inn. I was on a business trip then so I could have stayed anywhere. This made a lasting impression on me because they didn't even put soap out in the rooms. I guess they were afraid someone would steal the "extra" bars because you had to go to the desk and "request" soap. I have had other similar experiences with these people. Their business plans include such extreme parsimony that you have to wonder if they change the sheets and towels.

Sunday morning it was noticeably cooler. It was overcast with light clouds too as I resumed my run up I-35. Well, its called 135 here cause 35 cuts off to Topeka which is north east of Wichita. I went straight north and crossed I-70 where the interstate turned into US 81. This highway took me to I-80 in Nebraska where I turned west. I-80 runs across Nebraska and Wyoming and at this stage it was my intention to head north again in Wyoming with a vague goal of going up into Montana. Well, it got cold and stayed cloudy all day Sunday. It threatened rain, and I did encounter mildly wet conditions such as wet roads but I never ran through rain myself, just a little behind assorted storms. I made it to North Platte by about five p.m. and you guessed it, stayed in a Motel 6 hosted by a white guy. I noted to the clerk that Motel 6's always had white people hosting and he said that had something to do with the fact that Motel 6 is owned by Accor, a French company. The rate was $36. That night I watched the weather closely and could see that I was in for some cool and wet weather for the forseeable future. We had the tropical jet stream dumping moisture off the south Pacific across the western half of the country with similar pushes of conflicting air masses off the northwest Pacific, across Washington Oregon and to top it off a real strong arctic air mass was falling down the globe to challenge these other two. The next morning I met some people on a Harley from Alaska and they said it was real cold up north with lots of snow still. They were headed for Florida and thought I was silly to be headed north. Oh well!

Monday the parking lot was wet and it was in the upper 40s I think with highs in the 70s expected. At this time I still intended to do some camping starting just west of Cheynne I thought, in a state park there. This was not to be however.

I suited up in my full winter regalia pretty much trying to be water proof and cold proof as well. Here is a picture of the bike at a rest area on I-80 west of North Platte, Nebraska.

As far as the eye can see it is lush green rolling prairie. Nice. So I got to Cheyenne and lo and behold there was one of those tune to your a.m. dial, so and so frequency, for urgent message about road conditions...when the orange lights were flashing. I didn't have to have gas but decided to stop anyhow to check this warning out. I bought the gas and was checking the bike for anything that might be wrong when I saw a huge gash across my practically new front tire. I could pick up one corner of the tread and peeling it back expose the inner layer of the tire, the cords underneath the tread. Well this would not do at all so cancel all plans and replace this tire.

I rode through Cheyenne looking for a motorcycle dealer and finally stopped at a car parts place where a guy in the parking lot directed me to one just down the road from where we were. Lucky strike. Well they were closed. It was monday and this is what these businesses do I have noticed. They are always open on Saturday so they take Mondays off so they can have a full weekend.

I didn't know what to do except wait so I went to a motel across the street but instead of checking in we looked in the yellow pages and one of the ads gave hours for Mondays. It was a Kawasaki place and just a few blocks away so I rode over there and met Mike Ault who said they didn't keep the tires I needed in stock. He could get one for me by the next morning however. Before leaving on this ride I knew I'd have to replace the rear tire sometime during the trip. It was getting near the end of its life so we decided to do both tires. He said they'd be there by 10:30 the next day though the rear tire had to come from Texas. So next day I showed up at the appointed time and by 11:30 I was on my way. Total cost was $459 including $80 for shipping just on the tire from Texas. Mike expected $40 shipping, which is what he quoted me, and that is what he charged. Nice. I put Avons on. Avon Road Riders.

So in Cheyenne I ended up staying in the Guest Ranch Motel. They had a Motel 6 but this was closer to town. It was a decent sort of place. The lobby was full of orchids. The clerk, a real honest to goodness red blooded American, said his wife kept those and I met her the next morning and she told me some about the flowers when I went in to get coffee. The room was a little cold at first but warmed up nicely with the free standing portable radiator. I don't think the main heat was working but nevermind. The weather report looked pretty grim and it was here I abandoned hope of going further north. It showed snow and freezing temps west and north. I considered turning around and heading back the way I had come. I considered going south. Denver is a short run down I-25 from Cheyenne but snow was predicted along that path too and I really didn't want to go to Colorado anyhow. It wasn't until the next morning that I made my plans. After talking to a couple of local people at the Kawasaki place while they worked on the bike I decided to circle Colorado. I would go west through Laramie, Wyoming and turn south into Utah at the earliest opportunity. Maybe I would go to four corners. It had to be warmer there, but maybe not too warm, and I could camp at Gooseneck state park on the San Juan river.

So I put on even more winter stuff adding another layer underneath what I had worn yesterday, and hooked up my heated gloves for the ride across Wyoming. It was cold and it rained on me some but not a lot. I sort of dodged thunderstorms all day that Tuesday and the next day too.

The last time I was out here, I think it was 2007, I took Wyoming 130 out of Laramie to get over the Medicine Bow Mountains there. 130 goes right by Medicine Bow peak which tops out at 12013 feet. The pass is at 10847 feet. I knew this would be blocked by snow this year, or at least the roads would likely be icy. In '07 the snow was maybe fifteen feet high on either side of the road; but the road was clean. That too was in June.

I-80 west of Cheyenne takes you through these mountains too but I didn't encounter any snow at the lower elevation I-80 runs through. Not quite cold enough...but close. Just past Rock Springs, Wyoming you come to US 191 which goes right past the Flaming Gorge Reservoir on the Green river. I was in really dry country but there had obviously been a lot of rain and the desert round about was as green as you will ever see it. At the Utah line I took some pics.

I took this pic here too. You can just see some small puddles of water on the road there.

And this one.

And this is just down the road.

The above is right at the dam which is rather small I guess. Here is the dam. I was a little nervous crossing this as the roadway was full of metal apparatus, rail road like tracks for moving gates and assorted dam superstructures about. If you don't know wet metal on roadways is a bike hazard deluxe. Hard to keep traction on wet metal.

After leaving Cheyenne at 11:30 a.m. I guess I did ok arriving in Vernal, Utah about six p.m. just south of the flaming gorge...now full of water. It must have been really beautiful before. I think I am against daming up every river especially if it is just to attract developers and/or increase the tax base for government.

It is 366 miles from Cheyenne to Vernal. I took this picture to illustrate the threatening skies along my path. Somehow I managed to miss most of the rain once I got into Utah but the roads were mostly wet and I had to go slow on the extremely curvy roads.

And here is a picture of my room in Vernal. It was a Rodeway Inn...hosted by Indians. There was a Motel 6 in town but it was $69. The Rodeway was $50. I engaged the clerk and his wife in conversation. We got off into the economy in India. I learned that the Rupee was backed by gold...haven't checked this. I thought that was good. The man asked what backed the US dollar and I was surprised he didn't know. I loudly proclaimed that nothing backed the dollar. He seemed perplexed. I said nothing but the faith and credit of the US government which was headed south as fast as could be. I laughed and told him if he and wife had voted for Obama I wanted my money back on the room.

I was really tired so the first thing I did was get some ice and make a drink and THEN started to unpack the bike. I carried one bag in and went to get another. The door to the adjacent room opened and pot smoke billowed out as a young girl exited and walked to the passenger side of the car there next to me. I greeted her. She ignored me and quickly got in the car...for safety? Right behind her came this young guy. I didn't even look at him, just got another bag off the bike and took it into the room while they backed out. Just as they were driving away I came out and saw some folding money on the ground. I picked it up and chased them on foot but they were gone. It was $60. I thought about chasing them on the bike but it had straps hanging off it, and I couldn't get going fast enough. So I nursed my drink and noticed that the truck parked in front of the subject room was from Texas. Some kind of oil field contractor I surmised. Shortly another young guy exited the room and headed for this truck. I asked him about the money and he called his friend who would head back over from his dad's. This second fellow had been living on per diem for two years. His job was to x-ray welds of pipes that go into wells. He was from Pasadena, Texas.

I just about finished unloading the bike and the first guy shows up. He told me the correct amount of money he lost and I returned it to him smilingly suggesting that if he didn't smoke that "stuff" he probably wouldn't lose his money. He was not offended by this but I could tell he didn't know what to say so he just said thanks. I told him he was very lucky a person from Texas found the cash cause anybody else and he would never have heard about it. I asked him if he too was from Texas and he said Oklahoma. "Close enough," I said, and let him go. This guy is maybe 21 years old. The Pasadena chap was looking on for all this and found it very amusing but kept his cool and remained silent. It was a very friendly exchange with me playing the role of the surrogate father which I enjoyed very much. What do you want to bet that $60 was proceeds of a drug deal and further that the dope came from the dad of the young guy with the girl?

US 191 out of Vernal doesn't go straight south. It meanders off to the West a third of the way across Utah before cutting back to the east. I got an early start that Wednesday, say about 7:30, and went out to see what would happen. After coming down out of the mountains again I ran through this kind of country.

And this.

It was still cloudy with lots of rain all around but not much directly on lucky me.

Lots of rain here too recently. More than normal as you can see from all the green.

And this though it is a little blurry.

And here is the best picture of the trip I guess. I actually stopped for this one.

That one is pretty close to Moab where you'll find the Arches National Park. This was a stunningly beautiful ride made all the more pleasant by the unseasonably cool and wet weather. You could not ask for a better run on a motorcycle than I had that Wednesday, June 10, 2009. I made a note last night about this, you know, one of those reflective mood notes I like to indulge. I lost the note when I shut down the computer but the gist of it was that the world is full of beautiful things and there is not time to touch or hold all available. We are blessed because in a grain of sand resides the whole of creation and likewise in just one fine experience, with a clever fusion of mind the whole of reality can be brought to the front of a simple landscape. You know, where you feel you have it all just in having this little bit. All of the real informs every instance of experience. Is this satori? You decide. I just make this stuff up!

It's 320 miles from Vernal, Utah to Bluff, Utah near four corners. Rand McNally estimates the driving time at 5 hours 40 minutes. I left Vernal about 7:30 or eight and checked into the Kokopelli Inn in Bluff at 6:30. Stops for breakfast, gas, talking on the phone, rest area pit stops, taking pictures, etc., sure adds up. I remember trying to hurry because at this stage, in the morning, I intended to camp that night at Goose Neck park. As the day dragged on it got hot so I nixed that option. I guess that pretty much ended my fantasy about camping, at least for this trip.

The Kokopeli Inn was quite an indulgence for me at $76. It was by far the nicest Inn I used on this trip. It was here I met a guy on a Harley, didn't get his name, but he had traveled up to Yellowstone and Glacier national parks. Yellowstone, he said, was inaccessible because of snow. I'm glad I didn't go to Montana. I've been to Alaska on this bike. Montana can wait. Besides I was there in 2007 but riding my R90/6. On that trip I recall it was 100 degrees the day before I rode through Missoula and in the 30s next.

Anyhow I was up and out of Bluff pretty early. After buying and adding half a quart of oil...oh, that's how I met the Harley guy. He took the extra oil off my hands. I didn't want to carry it and he needed some anyhow. Come 7 a.m. I was on the road. It stayed cool a good while, and cloudy. This is serious desert here and it cools down fast at night.

This is in my path. I have to go over.

I took US 54 off of US 191 out of Bluff and followed it all the way to Raton, New Mexico. This is a very scenic route and goes from extreme desert conditions to lush green mountain valleys to high rocky crags sheathed in snow. It is a very challenging road for motorcyclists, quite narrow in the mountains with so many switchbacks and steep grades up and down that it makes you dizzy.

On the run outside Taos, just west of town, I shot this picture of the Rio Grande River. That gorge seems like about an eighth of a mile deep.

I could launch on how the hippies have ruined Taos, and especially with their earthship housing project out here in the desert near the Rio Grande. It is truly disgusting and all the more so because they delude themselves so abysmally with all the "sustainability" crap. If you are interested do a search. These people, that generation, MY f-ing generation, has ruined this country, or has bust a gut trying. See Obama in the WH! They were at this bridge above in full regalia, beating drums, playing hippie music, hawking the wares dredged from the abyss that is their degraded souls. Nihilists. Solipsists. Godless. Their self loving leads inevitably to self loathing and that is the center of their reality. They all need to be put back into the food chain. Seriously! Well I launched anyhow. Sorry. It is reflexive.

On the other side of Taos 54 climbs immediately up to Angel Fire and Eagles Nest. Coming down out of the pass I stopped for an apple here. There were a lot of people fishing this mountain stream.

Remember I mentioned all the switchbacks? Here is a nice shot of my "chicken strips". That is the part of the tire the rider is afraid to use in tight cornering. Now, I think mine are pretty narrow but you decide. My knee wasn't scraping the pavement exactly, but it seemed if I reached out with my hand I could probably pick up a pebble or two. I don't know.

OK, so it took me all day to go across New Mexico. I took the business loop at Raton, New Mexico off of I-25 and stopped at the first motel I came to after passing up the Holiday Inn. It was the Maverick motel, vintage, I guess, 1940s. The grounds were well maintained with lots of petunias along the drive and across the front of the office. Picture:

That is the view from my front door. Between here and the distant high ground is Raton, New Mexico. A woman was sitting outside in one of the chairs you see there. She greeted me with a thick accent and quoted a price of $47 total which I snapped up. Her name was something like Zorka, with an umlaut over the "o", I think. I asked her before getting her name, in German, Sind sie Deutsch? She said no, Czech. Oh! The office was full of her crochet items. They were very nice and I would have bought something had I had a way to carry it. Everything was large and she stiffened the items with sugar to form bowls for flowers and things like that. We hit it off, so to speak. Her husband, Nick, was from Croatia. He came to my room to show me how to operate the heater which I would need though it had been hot all the way across New Mexico almost, except for the mountains, of course, and the early morning over on the east side. He said it hadn't rained in a year and the desert outside town looked it too.

My room was very clean and I took to it. I like this carved headboard.

My stuff laid out in the bath.

And this is how I lived for the week. Only two restaurant meals, both breakfasts.

I think I was the only guest that night. In the morning I made coffee in my room with my camp stove and was on the road by seven or so. By noon I was in Amarillo and it was hot. I chased the asphalt to Lubbock and beyond but by the time I got to Post, Texas I couldn't take any more of the heat so I took a room in the Deluxe Inn which was somewhat overpriced at $50 total and not well kept compared to the Eastern European hosts in Raton. There were a lot of flies in the room and though the air conditioner worked it was obnoxiously loud. I noted and commented on the Hindu shrine set up behind the desk in the "lobby". I named one or two of the dieties, Ganapati, Ganesha, the elephant headed one, the Little Lord, and one she said was Krsna I noted did not have enough arms and that maybe in the U.S. he was less powerful. I would have recognised him had he had seven or eight arms. Krsna is the great Lord, subsuming all the others who are like angels, so to speak, if you have to compare to western religion. He is the one in the Bhagavad Gita (Song of the Lord, the Hindu "bible") who instructs Arjuna on how to pray. The lady wore a poker face during this exchange but I had the impression that not many guests offered comments on the Hindu religion, especially comments indicating intimate familiarity, for a westerner at least, with the Hindu pantheon. I spoke to her about bhakta, told her that as I understand it, a bhakti practices bhakta, i.e., love of the lord, and her response was that Bhakta was also a surname which I responded that it was but not as popular as, for instance, Patel, to which she averred. Actually I met a Bhakta last month I told her. He was a host, what do you know, at a motel in East Memphis I had the misfortune to stay in. I didn't tell her, but it was implied, that a Christian is a Bhakta too, in as much as he is one who loves the Lord, and that this is true vice versa.

I meant to have a restaurant meal that evening in Post but my first choice, a BBQ place, I could see by the parking lot, was too busy. I went to the south side of town...took me one minute from downtown, and found an interesting, locally owned hamburger joint. Sometimes these can be real finds so I tried it but after 30 minutes they hadn't started my order so I got my money back. There was hardly anyone there but about five minutes after I arrived the whole town, it seems, showed up and my order got lost in the shuffle it would seem. No problem. They comped me the Dr. Pepper. I didn't make a scene and like it or not had a much better experience at the McDonalds...except, of course, the burgers sucked...but the service was fast and friendly. After two burgers and fries I walked to the supermarket a block from the room and got one of those bags of fancy lettuce and a tomato and ate a big salad.

From Post to home is not that far and I determined to get an early start to beat the heat so at four a.m. I was up. I again made coffee in my room and with that in hand opened the door to check out the weather. It was warm. I could ride with just a shirt on top. Funny thing, there was a U-Haul truck towing a car pulling into the lot when I looked out. The driver got out and went to the door of the office. Wanted a room I guess. At four a.m. Hmmm! The door, of course, was locked and as he climbs back in the truck I close my door and resume my preparations to leave. A minute later I still hear the truck and go out to put a bag on the bike. He is backing up, trying to turn around. His girl, they are both twenty something I guess, is trying to help him do this but it is obvious they are not practiced truck drivers as they keep jackknifing the car. I don't want to watch this, so back in the room to brush my teeth, having finished the coffee. In a couple of minutes I come back out with another bag and the truck is gone. But not the "kids". They are both running around the parking lot waving their arms and yelling at and trying to corner what must have been the most obese cat in the world record books. It ran here and there with its huge stomach dragging the ground. Really, every bound and this huge sack of fat would swing first to its left and then to its right. Funny and pathetic at the same time and the owners seemed as inept at catching what must have been the world's slowest cat as they were at backing up the truck. Well I felt myself getting pulled into this situation despite my strong intention to not even acknowledge these fools. So back in the room fast where I resolved that the best course of action was to scram out of there as quickly as possible. One more bag, and a couple of little items to tend to. I put my helmet on in my room made my last check and locked the door behind me. I mounted the bike and the girl emerges alone from the shadows down to my left. No sign of boy or cat. She is barefooted and trots across the parking lot towards the street. Her butt crack is just visible above her way too tight jeans. There is some loose gravel around and that had to hurt her feet. I pulled in behind her and just a little too close and carefully followed her to the street both of us ignoring the other as much as possible. The guy is standing on the side walk and she joins him there as I pull out and give her the gas.

It was a little after five and there was a waning moon with a large planet dogging it in the heavens above my head. Another very bright planet was on the eastern horizon and after a bit you could just make out in the east the first fingers of dawn creeping up the firmament. With the whole Texas pan handle behind me I was riding through a tremendous array of wind turbines with red blinking lights on top. These stretched from horizon to horizon and were a definite blight on the terrain but they were soon behind me too. Everything was soon behind me, because five hours later I was home. I'll be looking for you in my mirror. Come on, let's go!

Emerald

2009-05-29T18:27:00.000-07:00

I live in an emerald, this spring at least.

And, this is nice.

I wanted to do this yesterday. We are having very mild weather for this time of year with plenty of moisture. So it is especially pleasant and even more so in the evening light.

And then, there is this mess waiting for me.

Roses

2009-05-29T17:34:00.000-07:00

Another dead soldier, Sgt. Major!

And she was such a pretty thing.

Just Cause

2009-05-24T17:41:00.001-07:00

Something about those roses gets me.

Assorted stuff

2009-05-21T06:52:00.000-07:00

The windscreen on my BMW K1100LT will no longer adjust up and down and it seems the motor is inoperative. Can't see spending $300 for a new motor. I'll run with the shield up all the time before I do that. I removed the motor from the bracket and activated the switch but all's happens is I hear the solenoid/relay clicking..both of them. So, if those click it means power is getting to the motor, right? Assuming the plugs/wires are OK. Since the motor does not spin I take it apart thinking the gears might be jammed. With the motor separated from the "gearbox" I can turn the sprocket, so, gears probably OK. I don't want to take this apart, so I put the motor back on the gearbox and run over to Taylor Auto Electric. They work on starters, alternators, but I got them to look at my motor. I stood there by the bench while the tech checked it out. He thinks it is indeed something inside the motor but doesn't want to work on it...not much, anyhow. He said I could leave it and when they ran out of "other stuff to do" they'd look at it. Thinks there might be an internal fuse like thingy that they could wire around. I told him it wasn't blowing fuses, but never mind that. He told me they wouldn't rewire the armature, but that they could make some new brushes, maybe, if that was the problem. He said there was an open circuit, bottom line.

So, in a few days I'll be living with, or without, an adjustable windshield. No big thing. Always been a pain in the rear anyhow.

Oh! Almost forgot the switch on the handlebar. My dealer evidently broke a wire and really buggered up a solder job when he fixed it. This ended up chafing away the insulation on an adjacent wire, but didn't blow a fuse. Hmmm! I had wanted to take it apart just to clean it when I discovered this. Well, push came to shove on this and it would be best to just replace it. $60. Arrrgh! It's on order. I'm gambling I'll get the motor running, but I'll bet not. I'm gonna hate having a useless $60 switch whose real value is about $3.

By the way, I thought I'd maintained this item pretty good, but when I took it apart it was just plain nasty. Especially the cables in those tubes.

Since my last post I went on another little camping trip up to Cedar Breaks State Park. It is about 350 miles from here, hard on the Red River right where the panhandle of Texas takes its northern turn. It is where the famous Quanah Parker lived and in fact the town there is called Quanah. It rained a lot of the way up there, in fact I was going to get away from the rain. Looking for some sunshine. That night in the tent it rained more. Really hard with continuous lightning and thunder. I lay there calculating in my mind the distance to the lightning based on distance sound travels in one second. Once I looked outside and the water was literally running around the tent. I stayed dry inside. But the main thing was the 50 mile winds (estimated) didn't blow the tent down. This has happened to me before which is why I now use this Harrier North Face shelter.

I tried to go for a hike the next day, but had to put that off because of more thunder boomers. And that night it rained ever harder. With marble sized hail. That was a first for me. Again, my equipment withstood this onslaught perfectly. I got to do my hike the next morning. Four hours and about eight miles and I had covered the 1500 acre park pretty well. I couldn't keep huge clots of red clay mud off my boots so it was a pretty good workout. It is really beautiful with a truly wonderful canyon right in the middle.

The third night was quiet, but hot and humid, so I was ready to leave that Friday morning and came home riding hard on the K bike. At home I had a real mess to clean up from all the rain and red mud on my stuff, but all's well now and I am getting ready to go out again and conquer some asphalt.

As soon as I fix this bike.

Last night about tenish, my friend Kristi came over and brought me a chicken enchilada with sour cream stuff on it. This was delicious. She hung out for a while drinking wine. Llano Estacado special reserve. I love this stuff. She had brought it over too, the day before. Said she wanted ME to drink it. But hey, she always drinks my wine and I always bitch that she never buys any.

Gotta go ride my bicycle.

Update: Taylor Auto Electric just called and said the motor is good after all. His test equipment was bad. His best bet now is that in spite of the fact the relays click they could still be bad as in not making good "enough" contact due to burning/carbon build up in the points. Interesting.

Volition and Teleology

2009-04-25T07:32:00.000-07:00

Teleology: Vitalist philosophy. The doctrine that not only mechanical forces but also the self realization principle provides for the guidance of phenomena. There are final causes, purposes, embedded in the common stuff from which we all spring. These are not to be reasoned out, however. Reason has become an impediment for most.

It follows that repeated acts are volitional to their own repetition. Deeds of a kind attract, ergo, bad doing equates to bad company, ergo, it is possible to attract "higher beings", good and bad.

If you seek God, you will go to God. If you seek.........!

How'd I miss the Vernal Equinox

2009-04-13T05:46:00.000-07:00

Somehow when the vernal equinox came this year I missed it. I don't recall what my preoccupation was but for some reason I wasn't paying attention. I don't like to miss these events. Observance of such things ties me to an ancient past, puts me in a line of succession that goes back to the first man who looked into the heavens and was able to pick out the patterns of activity there. One thing I routinely do, for instance, along these lines, is look for the first sliver of moon each month and when I find it ponder on the number of others on the planet doing that same thing at that same time. A small congregation, I imagine, but a congregation still, connected by the rhythm of the lunar cycle.

Last month I traveled to New York. That was a disaster. Family problems. I thank God for my family, but this is more than I can handle.

In February I took a trip too. I rode my BMW up to Ft. Worth area to visit an aunt. Then I rode West on I-20. I didn't know where in particular I was riding, but I ended up at Monahans Sand Hills State Park. The ride was hard and I lucked out in that the wind was not blowing, rather, when I got to the park it had died down. I camped there two days and hiked over the dunes laid down by the passing of glaciers in an ancient ice age. This is a beautiful place, this Earth, full of wonders beyond imagining. Those dunes, that whole experience, left me truly renewed. After 200 miles the first day, and no sleep that night, I rode 300 the next. I rode right through stress and boredom, weariness and cold winds, hunger, cloying high pitched screaming noise, incessant vibration, all that is motorcycling. I rode right through it to revitalization itself. But, of course, both days together amounted to a short ride but still I was on the road from 8:30 a.m. till four. Another Beemer showed up as I was finishing making camp. We shared some Johnnie Walker and swapped stories over an evening meal. Me, chemically heated MRE. He, something from REI, I think, which he cooked over a tiny stove. He was on his way to Piedras Negras vicinity to rally with other bikers along the Rio Grande. I have been on those roads twice, so I told him he was in for a nice ride.

When I left the sand hills I rode to Iraan which is where U.S. 190 ends, and took it East to where it intersects with U.S. 183. This is one of the best rides/drives in Texas, I think. It parallels I-10 for a long way and is the closest thing, nowadays, to what passes for a deserted highway. Very light traffic. It took me home and I spent many hours just being in my own personal space, in my element, asphalt to the front, disappearing to the rear. Fast.

Transcendence is in phenomenal objects

2009-01-29T17:00:00.000-08:00

This is a spin off of something I read here. Look at Metaphysics heading, paragraph 3.

"Since transcendence is in phenomenal objects, the beauty that we see in things is in fact a perception right through factual reality to Beauty Itself."

With apologies to Kelly Ross I would spin that thusly:

".....the truth that we see in things is in fact a perception right through factual reality to Truth Itself."

".....the real that we see in things is in fact a perception right through factual reality to the Real Itself."

".....the Diety that we see in things is in fact a perception right through factual reality to the Diety Itself."

".....the value or moral truth that we see in things is in fact a perception right through factual reality to the Value or Moral Truth Itself."

...for love, knowledge, etc.

In so far as objective reality cannot be said to have qualities other than those pertaining to phenomenal objects it seems clear to me that the development in nature of conscience is an indication of an a priori/primordial valence or inclination to that manifestation. Acknowledgment to LeCompte du Nouy

The arising of beings with a capacity to behavior based on conscience means an inclination to good inheres as a potentiality in the most basic structure of the cosmos. Just like matter itself, or light, for instance.

By this I do not claim intelligent design as a universal law. I would rather claim some mysterious intention, never to be completely understood.

Note from Meeting with Desani

2008-12-18T10:28:00.000-08:00

Look closely at where we come from. We are on a journey. We need tools, devices. Take from the past those good procedures as instruction from a revered teacher. Use them carefully, and when the present generation gives them up to the future our children will enjoy and appreciate what we did. Our acts should leave a residue, an accretion, on the gemstone of human history that gives clarity and brilliance. They will, if we seek knowledge, love, truth, and beauty, and do good deeds according to standard cultural norms.

Besides the great lord who is omnipresent there are everywhere smaller lords too. Some are tiny, infinitely small.

For whatever activity undertaken, there is a spirit for that doing and that spirit in time gets a life of its own, gets self awareness as it goes on. These acts eventually become forms of worship.

Knowingly or unknowingly our acts, ritualized and regularly played out, constitute worship, praise of spirits. The meditator eventually becomes the object of meditation.* These spirits range from the infinitely small to the infinitely large, from the most terrible evil to the most beautiful good, and so on.

Doing good enhances goodness. Goodness is the reservoir drawn from when acts of kindness are done. And it is thereby increased. These acts are like accretions. Charity grows by use. Doing right this time makes it easier the next and so forth.

Worship must have been discovered not invented.

Where the concentration is, there is the persistent, the lasting, the permanent. That to which attention goes is that which returns. In a sense to attend to something is to put consciousness into it, to bring it to life, to self awareness.

If born a warrior one concentrates on being such. One works at the tasks of warriorhood, makes the craft a permanent feature. So the warrior lives on generation after generation, life after life. The consequence is that the craft gets more efficient as time goes on. The power of war machines grow. The display of the hardware more and more glorious, awesome. There is no end to it except maybe annihilation. Probably the essence of the warrior is the death wish. The wish to be free.

*From the Bhagavad-Gita “Worshipers of spirits and goblins go to spirits and goblins, worshipers of the departed fathers go there, worshipers of me come to me.” (Krsna)

On Experience

2008-11-01T16:10:00.000-07:00

At the moment of supreme focus there is nothing there. The dichotomy, that is, between experiencer and that experienced disappears. We say, “lost in the moment…” to explain this. What happens is a melding of the ego, the mode of the experience, and that being experienced. He who loves his God disappears, God disappears, all remaining is “love of God”, for instance. In a “Zen” sense, if you take the well known phrase, “when hungry, I eat” and change it to “when hungry, eating” you have a sense of what is meant here, assuming the eater focuses on eating to the total and absolute exclusion of all else. The void, into which all stimuli disappears at the moment experience arises, for one who has total concentration, subsumes the whole of creation in a kind of quasi death. This is rapture, for the acolyte, pleasure, for the seeker thereof, adventure, for the mountaineer, and so forth.

You Decide

2008-10-30T18:15:00.000-07:00

The voice of the void: "Alive, I can't die; Dead, I can't be born."

On Will , Faith, Instinct, Reason, and Thought

2008-06-05T08:37:00.000-07:00

My use of the word Real below is as an aspect, a recognizable face (facet), of the motive force, spirit, that informs all that is. One could as easily use other words such as God, the Truth, the One, and so forth. This note ties in with much of what is written elsewhere in my blog and takes a step or two towards making a case for free will.

My reading of Blaise Pascal Pensee 340 wherein he observes that animals will but can't do math leads me to contemplate that there can be will without thought. Consider that will as principle preexists thought in that sentient life must emerge, become self aware, evolve a sense of cause and effect, and develop the use of symbols before the emergence of thinking itself. I am suggesting that thinking in the anthropomorphic sense does not occur for every order of being but that will perhaps does. The Real itself is a kind of being but does it observe the consequences of action within itself and think to affect those consequences by offering different action? Or does the Real rather through an exercise of will set creation in motion and let the consequences work themselves out? I don't think the Real apart from utilization of the self conscious faculties of created sentient beings has self awareness. I do think it has awareness itself but in the sense that one is aware equally of all that is in every particular as well as in total, that awareness can't be reflexive. It is only when awareness, consciousness, enters into a part of the whole and looks back on the whole from the standpoint of a separate being that self awareness enters into reality. So I think thought is an expression of consciousness in adequately developed sentient life forms. Furthermore in the Real awareness is something possessed in the sense that it exists as a potentiality awaiting the arising of conditions suitable for its emergence.

Consider also that instinct is related to will while reason is related to thought. So animal's instinct is a more primitive expression of the principle of will than in man while reason is similarly an evolute of the development of thought.

This brings up the question of whether faith is the opposite of will. I think not exactly. Faith is not intention but the yielding to intrinsic intention, existential will. Seeing there is something in the nature of existence that in reality is beyond my understanding, while I apprehend benevolence therein, I yield, that is, suspend "my" little will to preexisting will, that exists potentially and really in the very stuff of being. That, I think, is faith.

Verbindung II

2008-06-01T11:44:00.000-07:00

Here is a black one. It is acrylic on canvas. Something tightly bound, it is. A presentation, a setting held firmly in place, a vast mystery as to origin, as to what exactly is going on, as to purpose, meaning, emotion. Is it love? Is it not? Perhaps it works to express and expand consciousness. Maybe it is so tightly held that any such expression is futile. Is it a surd? Is it without reason? Perhaps. But how can one possibly know whether it is not some kind of heuristic energeia? My intention is that it is the latter. It is self learning potentiality embedded in the kernel of the Real itself as a kind of meaning the expression of which is an infinite ingress of fractaling purpose.

Entelechy II

2008-06-01T11:09:00.000-07:00

Entelechy II was my recent gift for Kristi Ann. It wasn't really her 24th birthday gift but it was close. She says it is her favorite. We have had long discussions about the use of black in my art and it is of course significant that she chose a white piece for her own. I told her black represents the existential void which idea she finds disturbing. Kristi has lately taken to the path of faith so I explained that it is on faith that the void, with an infinite subtlety, becomes full of the divine. Nonetheless unless sustained by a belief system of some sort it can shift back to everlasting emptiness yawning at our feet. All creatures must cope with this teetering on the brink of meaning and not meaning, of purpose and not purpose, of love and not love, of God and not God. It is our intention that foreshadows whether our path is into nihilism or solipsism, or deism. It is our determination that takes us into everlasting darkness of the abyss or into the redeeming light of infinite bliss which is union with the divine.

Oil on canvas.

Entelechy I

2008-05-05T19:20:00.000-07:00

Entelechy is from the Greek entelechia. For Aristotle it meant being at an end. This is oil on canvas.
Don't know if you believe in the spirit world but those two "entities" towards the right of the painting represent "disembodied" spirits. One has a sort of eye while the other is a little vaguer but you can tell they are both "watchers". They have their existence in subtle bodies, matter still, but more ephemeral than ours. They are mostly transparent and sort of like gossamer but they have appetites which they feed by watching, attending to, the activities of human beings. This is sort of like the vicarious experience we have watching a play or a movie. They aren't very smart. They are just appetites. Their existence consists of parasitic attachment to particular indulgences of their hosts and in fact their hosts often do these indulgences at the urging of the watchers. Of course they are not the end within, unless you lose your will to theirs. The end within is the secret fire under the domed hierarchical form, the pyramid, and is heuristic energeia. It is eternal, imperishable, and has the quality of conferring individuality and actuality. It is existential mass. It is capable of being or not being any actuality and is continuously self learning new actualities. The entelechy of potentiality is actuality.

Ritual Object

2008-04-24T13:21:00.000-07:00

This is a found objects assemblage I did. All of these art pieces I will publish here were done about the same time, i.e., 1970s, during the period of my life when I fancied I wanted to find validation as a visual artist. I entered contests, won prizes, and such, even showed my stuff in a museum in Austin once but my other interests trumped this effort and I gave up the idea of making a living at this. At any rate I found a certain kind of fulfillment in these creations and my attraction to them has not diminished over time. In their creation my mind was beautifully, exquisitely focused. I like reentering these states of consciousness. I have had opportunities to give these away to family and friends over the years and even to sell them on a few occasions, but the price was never sufficient to make me part with them. I am glad I still have them around but would like to share them. So I will put them here.

dense tearful dance

2008-04-17T06:13:00.000-07:00

if can you too where want did dense tearful dance
(propensely waiting for falling me)
and little lubricant folly for hidden things,
reality slips concretely between ego's soul
i tend to manhood by degrees of you
(wait for me please, after all)
my petty exhortation is your echofile.

generally any particular thing loving knows,
this or these that those
(where why and wherefores see
wait for me can't you please).

while being allowed hollows hallowed thoughts
suffering goes where wild wind blows
as long gaunt ghosts before time
we tend our seems as dreaming deems
(but really is merely and lovely plain
please wait for me, and anyway)
dreaming deeds is doing
all nothing does.

Verbindung

2008-04-16T14:09:00.000-07:00

Acrylic and found objects on panel by me circa 1973. The theme in my mind to which I was attempting to give aesthetic expression was of human life being in the grip of an infinite regress of technology where only efficiency was of value. Today we might speak of this sentiment as relating to the so called singularity.

Evolution of History

2008-04-02T20:48:00.000-07:00

Some thoughts provoked by Daniel Boorstin*, his chapter on evolution of history.

I am rather inclined to think that there is only one absolute truth, the conditio sine qua non, though infinite approaches to that truth are possible. These approaches are mere artifacts, and this is Boorstin, "shards" of mental pottery, transient vessels of aspiration for the "Truth". Therefore, knowledge is not constant or immutable, but ephemeral, as dew on the rose. Knowledge is a mere contemporary of its zeitgeist. It paints the way, yes, but soon along that way, there will be newer signs appropriate to new contemporaries.

Sum

When there are no clouds
the sun shines-

Is that drinking tea from an empty cup?

All historians, indeed, all artists, theologians, and scientists, sate themselves on the contents of an empty vessel. I agree with R. G. Collingwood that only philosophy, of all man's endeavors, categories of being, Stages on Life's Way**, provides the framework wherein its practitioners can come to see that true understanding springs from the consciousness that returns on itself. Release the dichotomies! One simply cannot be brought out of darkness into light because darkness and light are in an interesting way the same thing.

So! Jews were never brought out of Egyptian slavery into the promised land. This historical/mythological paradigm of Christian salvation, coming out of the evils of the flesh into the salvation of the spirit, is one dichotomy. Christians are never "saved" from their sins by virtue of one defining moment in history. Similarly workers never free themselves, by whatever device, be it collective bargaining or revolution, from bondage to the controllers of the machine apparatus of production. And don't fail to note the "self similarity" of the two historical trends of Christianity and Marxism touched on here. (One is a fractal of the other.) Freedom, individuality, independence are a simple turn of the mind away for one and all. A gymnastic juggernaut is not required. Living through a hellish history based on false myths of original sin is not requisite. See that art, religion, science, history are mere preparations of the mind for philosophy. Philosophy is the culmination of the journey past or through these signposts. Their modes of consciousness are directed out from itself. Philosophy is man's consciousness turned back on its origin. That turn of the mind is a requisite of true understanding.

Collingwood's Speculum Mentis lays out this idea that the first signpost, Art, is expressive of the aspiration for beauty and is a search for, a longing for, the "other", that which is lacking. But is it really? In what respect would we lose our identity in blissful union? Isn't annihilation already and always there in that empty cup? Religion posits absolute reality in an absolute other. History posits its goal in a distant future to be achieved through evolution. The faith of science is that measurement of infinity is achievable and mistakenly conflates knowledge with understanding. All are instances of the attempt of the soul to go beyond itself, of the urge to see reality as greater than it is.

There are, of course, many other considerations some of which I have addressed previously in this space. Beauty, truth, liberty, love, and similar attributes of consciousness are, besides what I say here, I believe, facets of a divine being and are in a sense also spirits in themselves in that "their" being is added to, enhanced somehow by participation in them of sentient life. The principles grow by being called on and their luminescence increases through this use. It also bears repeating that existential mass embodies these principles as potentialities that emerge, so to speak, in the presence of sentient life. Our consciousness directed in these categories is fertile soil for the growth of these spirits. Thus it is that God has commerce with creation. Thus it is that God has self experience. For what other purpose could there be for making this being? I am here at the cusp of projecting, I see, my human nature on the cosmos. This is a conundrum that recurs throughout history. My answer is that I am the cosmos in a sense, so this projection is of the cosmos onto itself. Keeping all the caveats mentioned here and elsewhere in mind, that is how I am able to be confident in my appraisal.

*The Discoverers
**Soren Kierkegaard

Note on fractals

2008-04-01T09:24:00.000-07:00

Yesterday I mentioned fractals in comparison to the increasing complexities of life. Creation has built in uncertainty so while every instantiation of the real contains within itself all that went before it also embraces new elements. This is why it is true that while nothing changes in reality it is also true that at the same time the real is forever new. Look closely at your breathing, for instance. Every breath is somewhat like all that went before yet if you look closely you will see that every breath is also unique. This pattern repeats itself endlessly. To know something in this environment is impossible just because of the uncertainty that seeds the new. Therefore only heuristic learning is effective learning. As we approach an understanding we see that final knowledge escapes our precision and minor flaws emerge in our calculations. On these "mistakes" we ground ourselves anew and the self learning, self teaching, continues.

For a fractal galery go here. More from MathWorld here.

Old Flames

2008-03-31T19:01:00.000-07:00

I don't think this is going to work the way I would like. Usually when I come here I have a fairly clear idea of what I want to write but today I have only the need to write. I am patient though, and will dwell here a little to see what happens. There is plenty to say but I just don't know how to do it this time. I am not confused. I am overwhelmed. Life is so full of so many myriads of experiences and all need to be put to words. Doing so not only is an affirmation of those events it is also a validation and a way to immortality. Sort of. It is like having children and knowing with certainty that you live on in them and in those of their issue forever.

The landscape of my dilemma is vast and presents itself like a white dove fluttering in the featureless void. This is what I feel like. I pull back from the abyss, or I am pulled back by fate. Invisible strings? Fruits of intention? Answers to fervent petitions to a personal deity? I don't know but it is certainly true that whatever your intention or petition the response when it comes will be rife with complexities unanticipated. Life is above all a kind of fractal. Recall E.E. Cummings, "Deeds can't dream what dreams can do." Knowing this, that discovery is the action of the unknown, vulnerability is my natural state. Risk is almost a metaphysical category in my life so I trust instinctively, and love. This is something I have long cultivated. Yet at this juncture there are no paths and I must pick my way carefully. Not that there ever were, though I imagined them. Here is a generous spirit, an incomparable beauty, and compelling desire but these are understood. Not as a measurement, not as something known, but as something intimately owned. A part of me that is a part of another, truly an apotheosis. Yet, it is an expression only begun, a running, tripping, headlong rush through the void. That plummeting, fluttering white dove suspended in darkness, no place to rest, find completion, no twig to grasp, none, nowhere. So vulnerable. So helpless.

We make our own light here in this fastness of the soul. I would shine and thus show a path for others but how to make a path through the abyss? What are the signposts? The dove? No, that is an aspect of spirit. Love? I think love is more. This is it. Love is a lot more. It is, in fact, the void itself. The abyss unrecognized. The unfathomable void. If someone asks you what you mean by love tell them that love is meaning capable of filling any emptiness whatsoever. Even if that emptiness is the whole cosmos. And with that the circle is completed and Beauty and Truth with Love shine like facets of the same jewel and their light penetrates any darkness whatsoever, any darkness anywhere. To be open to this is to share in everlasting, eternal joy and to make another see this is even greater because it is in reality the divine spark finding and kindling anew eternal fire, fire that burns everywhere and consumes everything. It is the annihilation we so earnestly desire, to be lost in the other. So, yes, I have looked into eyes and realized while I was falling, a white dove fluttering, that the darkness in the midst of our eyes was the same place, that we were one and the darkness is also the light universal, centered everywhere, bounded nowhere, an infinity to be discovered, not a mystery to be unraveled. I don't want to know. I want to always be on the cusp of the new, discovering roads untrodden, lighting the way on an eternal journey. So, yes, I have and still do love. The words come easy. So right. So easy. "I love you." Go tell someone in words, in deeds, even with a soulful look into their eyes, and if they ask what you mean, and that is natural, they are asking for what is said here. Choose your words carefully after a close reading of your hearts and the meaning they convey will be near the truth here expressed.

Gate Opener

2008-03-13T18:46:00.000-07:00

Sheesh! I was out on my bicycle ride. It was cloudy for awhile. When the sun came out I reached in my pocket for my sun glasses. When I pulled them out my gate/garage opener came with them. I heard it hit the pavement. I said out loud, "oh shit!" as my rear wheel ran over the opener. I stopped and laid the bike down in the middle of the road and walked the few paces back to where I saw the pieces laying on the pavement. There was the printed circuit board, the cover, the insert that constituted the "buttons", and the base. I collected and inspected these. All appeared intact except the cover which was missing a three eights of an inch of plastic on one of the short edges. Still I was able to fit it all back together. Then the ride home. I was in the ninth mile of my thirteen plus mile ride. So I got to consider for another forty minutes or so whether the device was ruined, and to what extent. I got to the gate. It worked! Seven tenths of a mile later I got to the garage. It worked! Life is good.

A Note on Epistemology

2007-11-09T15:14:00.000-08:00

"Matter confers individuality, form universality." - Aristotle

Ross' paper on on Meaning and Universals prompted this consideration.

"An individual object AS an individual object is PARTICULAR, not universal", while the blueness of the object IS universal....speaking for instance of my PC monitor. There are many blue things so blue is a quality of many objects, a universal. But, in so far as the monitor participates in the universe as a whole, is, indeed, a foci of the universe...every object is a focus of all reality, prima facie, I think, then perhaps the assumption that the monitor is not a universal like its quality of being blue is just that, an assumption. After all, it is true that, like blueness, there are many instances of "monitorness" as well.

Yes, BUT man made monitors. He didn't make blue. Can't. And, more importantly, blue is not material while monitors are. Monitors have always been POTENTIALLY in existence, but blueness has always been ACTUALLY in existence, at least since the creation of the universe, I
think. Actual objects not yet "invented" or realized, in their potentiality, are part of the end within, the entelechy. Abstractions/universals that will pertain to these coming objects are all with us now and are not the end within. Universals are actual within themselves even if there is nothing to which they might pertain. The quality of being blue, then, is metaphysical, an eternal paradigm waiting always for suitable conditions to pertain for it to come into existence. An object, an individual, i.e., a sentient life form with perception in the appropriate bandwidth, and so on, these are such conditions. This is the Platonic "form" of blue.

Here is the formula from Ross:

"The "form" of the object will be the complex of all its abstract features and properties. If the object looks red or looks round or looks ugly, then those features, as abstractions, belong to the "form." The individuality of the object cannot be due to any of those abstractions, which are universals, and so must be due to something else. To Aristotle that was the "matter" of the object. "Matter" confers individuality, "form" universality."

Based on these considerations, reason is to knowledge as understanding is to wisdom, I think. Reason, a kind of measurement, is ALWAYS anthropomorphic, rooted in our "body". You can measure your way to knowledge but not wisdom. People confuse understanding with measurement. Understanding draws from the "Tacit Dimension", from form and constituent universals, not from matter, individuals. While measurement is always "of" matter, understanding is "of" form. Form takes us beyond the individual because constituent qualities of form pertain beyond any one material aggregate. They are abstractions of the "thing" and as such are the coin of understanding in the same way mathematics, for instance, is the coin of measurement in the service of reason. Therefore, understanding pertains to the field beyond the individual. Its culmination is wisdom. Further, in answer to the question "how do I understand this?" I answer, "because I am this."

There is no proof of wisdom, no logic, no mediation through reason, knowledge, or measurement.

Wisdom like blueness is a universal and might come to pertain to certain individual sentient beings equipped with the proper bandwidth, so to speak.

Wisdom is the entelechy of understanding as much as knowledge is the entelechy of reason or a rose is the end within the rose bud, or the oak within the acorn.

Instinct, will, thought, reason, faith

2007-10-04T09:34:00.000-07:00

During study of Blaise Pascal's "Pensees" I note that one can have will without thought. For instance, animals "will" but can't do math. Instinct in animals is akin to a primitive form of will. Animal instinct evolves in man to will and thought emerges too bringing reason into existence. Instinct did not exist before evolution of animals. So, with progress of evolution from matter to life there is emergence of attributes such as instinct, will, thought, etc. that pertain to conscious being. Instinct, will, thought, reason are concomitant ingredients of consciousness.

These and others are surely seeded in existential mass itself by knowing intention and their emergence proves existential meaning and purpose to the cosmos.

One must wonder if faith is the opposite of will. Not exactly, I think. But while faith is not intention it could be characterized as the yielding to "intrinsic" intention, intention embedded in fundamental reality itself.

Seeing there is something here, in existence, in the Real, beyond my understanding, beyond my ability to fully grasp and hold as "my" own knowledge, while I apprehend benevolence therein, I yield, suspend "my" will. That, I think, is faith.

I accept that the Real is a divine mystery the discovery of which is infinite action of the unknown. Life is the platform for this process and consciousness is the tool. Faith is a mechanism, perhaps "the" mechanism, of sentient life to participate fully in this cosmic purpose and meaning.

Eroticism, Music and Madness - annotated

2007-07-22T11:11:00.000-07:00

Prof. Poteat passed in 2000 so this is more than a little late I suppose. I knew him briefly at the University of Texas, Austin philosophy department in 1970/71 where he was guest lecturer from Duke University.

Another of my benefactors instructed that if you bring something to mind again and again that it tends to take on a life of its own and that in fact, if you are following others who have pursued similar meditations you eventually tap into that stream of consciousness, as it were, and benefit from the work of those in whose steps you follow. I have done that all these years with the knowledge imparted to me by Bill Poteat. That endeavor has increasingly come to occupy my mental activities and has been a source of inspiration and discovery. I was blessed to have the great fortune to have known this wonderful man. I am, of course, not an academic and am anything but an expert in these things but they bring me joy and more importantly, peace. It helps me to write this down in a more formal way than it exists in the books and papers scattered around my study and in the thought patterns, modifications, of my mind.

Bill Poteat used this course in part to convey his thoughts about modern man’s malaise. His thinking is that a large segment of western man has evolved into a spiritless self, a self in despair and that this personal tendency has roots in a fundamental philosophical conflict between Greek and Hebrew world views. Hebrew thought, being the basis for Christianity, is a primary underpinning of the western experience. It is this influence that creates, or posits, as Kierkegaard (Author A) wrote, the daemonic in nature, the sensuous genius, the erotic. This daemonic spirit is expressed most eloquently in the classic work of Mozart, Don Giovanni but its ramifications are much more than musical. This spirit informs every aspect of modern life. Poteat thought that it was the foundation for a madness that permeates modern civilization. He particularly thought that the development of atomic weapons were the most egregious manifestation with the accompanying policy of “mutual assured destruction”. He put together a tape that he played for the class that combined among other things the sounds of exploding atomic bombs with the music of Mozart’s Don Juan. At this juncture in my life, I am not so sure that it would not be more accurate to attribute war like activities to a more primitive impulse in the human animal than the sensuous in nature as posited by Hebrew shortcomings that flowered in Christianity. This is not to say that these attributes have no bearing whatsoever on the tendency of mankind to make war. It is an ephemera that we pursue here. Trying to pin down such cause/effect relationships is an extremely daunting intellectual exercise to which people, like Bill Poteat, dedicate their entire lives. My efforts pale in comparison.

Having said all that it is important to point out that Prof. Poteat was a practicing Christian. So was Kierkegaard, though he was at odds with the established religion of his time. The ESOTERIC teachings of Christianity do not carry the same negative baggage as that written of here. It is but one scenario that might shed some light on western history, on western man in particular, and how he has evolved as a sentient being in a world. I happen to believe that Christianity on the whole has been a positive influence. Take particular note that I, and not Poteat, focus attention on so called evangelicals. However, it goes without saying that I find a limited common cause with them in certain ways, particularly in the political realm. I think we share a common love of liberty and an attendant rugged individualism. This is an infinitely complex issue and any attempt to quantify all of the nuances involved will necessarily fall short. I would note in passing the parallels, I think obvious, between the activities of intoxicated youth (and yes, adults too) at rock concerts and those in attendance at an “old fashioned” revival meeting. As well, it is worth noting that highly successful political figures, e.g., Adolph Hitler, used the spoken word in the musical sense herein described and were able thereby to not just engender a longing in the sense of the sensuous but to make it into a power base, to use it to hold a whole population in thrall and set them on a suicidal course of action.

The previous post in this blog, of course, is as true a copy of the syllabus as I could make. Here I presume to insert my personal comments in bold type. I also appended Pascal’s fragments 72, 205, and 427 as well as the below referenced excerpt from Kierkegaard’s (Author “A”) Either/Or Vol. I.

I would provide an excerpt for the reader here from Blaise Pascal’s Pensee’s, fragment 72. This is good to keep in mind as you undertake a reading of what follows: “He who regards himself in this light will be afraid of himself, and observing himself sustained in the body given him by nature between those two abysses of the Infinite and Nothing, will tremble at the sight of these marvels; and I think that, as his curiosity changes into admiration, he will be more disposed to contemplate them in silence than to examine them with presumption.”

In memory of William H. Poteat

"Eroticism Music and Madness"

Course Syllabus

I. "Eroticism, Music and Madness"

As principle, as power, as self-contained system, sensuousness is first posited in Christianity; and in that sense it is true that Christianity brought [the] sensuous into the world.

1. Arche' as Cosmos, logos, psyche.

Arche', first principle, beginning of the world {as cosmos, i.e., order, ornament, opposite of chaos; as logos, i.e., fundamental order of the cosmos, divine word or reason (believed) incarnate in Jesus; as psyche, i.e., human soul, mind, spirit, universal consciousness}

2. Arche' as davar.

Arche’ (Greek) as davar (Hebrew), word or thing, action of God in space/time. From root word “dibur” meaning “to speak”. “Every davar expresses a dibur—a spoken message. Every physical object or phenomenon, in addition to its physical reality, conveys a spiritual comment on existence.”

3. The ordinacy of Cosmos arche' –

Orderly arrangement, disposition of order as first principle.

4. The different ordinacy of davar arche'

Orderly arrangement, disposition of word or thing, action of God as first principle, beginning of the world.

a. Logos is being, is reality, is divine. (Reality does "hide" itself, must be sought behind "appearances".)

b. The relation of "appearances" to logos. Being and nothingness relation.

c. Yet: Being is finite and fully knowable.

d. Davar is not reality, is not being, is not divine.

e. The paradigmatic act -- speech

1). Speech and speaker: former manifests latter, but not fully.

2). Act and actor: former manifests latter, but not exhaustively.

3). The person cannot be known exhaustively -- by another, by himself.

4). The Person is fully disclosed only to God.

5. What is the ordinacy of the Davar arche'?

a. Keeping promises -- God's model.

b. Is retaining one's identity

1). Cf. Israel vs. Yahweh: "I will be as I will be" -- "absolute relation to the absolute, relative relation to the relative."

2). Edward Chamberlain, Bendrix.

II. So -- whether you have the ordinacy of a finite Cosmos, or that of a providential divine will -- faithful Yahweh -- as alternative principles, you still do not have "restlessness and tumult, infinity."

A. How then does Xianity posit that spiritually (pneumatically) qualified sensuousness expressed in the musical Don Giovanni in Mozart's opera?

B. Xianity destroyed the finite, harmonious and fully intelligible cosmos of Grk. thought by substituting davar (the speaking and heard word) for logos (the word as written and read).

The book of Mark, 16:15 “Go into the world and PREACH the gospel…!” Proselytize, evangelize, stand in a pulpit and exhort the congregation. Passion is key to success of evangelizing. I would further note that, to my knowledge Jesus never wrote. Any reference to his teaching always follows the form “Jesus said so and so.” I think this simple fact goes a long way towards verifying the thought of Kierkegaard and Poteat.

C. This made the relation between medium and its content more equivocal and contingent.

1. Reality does not hide behind appearances -- logos behind aesheta.

2. Reality is equivocally manifest as a person is always equivocally manifest in his speech.

3. Reality of man is contingently manifest inasmuch as he cannot fully indwell his own speech.

D. But the medium of speech becomes radically distinct from all cyclical and organismic forms of ordinacy; and becomes paradigmatic medium to reality.

E. Let us remember:

1. Language has its element in time.

2. It passes away in time in an essential sense.

a. Because of verbs with 3 tenses

b. Reflexive first personal pronouns -- thereby making a constant reference to the world as radically experienced by each of us in our bodies.

3. That inasmuch as speech has its element in time:

a. The sensuous element is negatived

b. Therefore: as a medium, speech frees us from ordinate nature, thereby giving us spirit --while restoring ordinacy at a higher level. (We "hear" the meaning not the "sounds")

F. Yet -- the very equivocalness and contingency of the relation between this medium and its content has two consequences:

1. Emphasizes the importance of fidelity to the spoken word -- the promise -- with Yahweh as model. Our words are forever in danger of becoming "musical".

2. Thereby suggests an antithesis to itself.

3. The loss of identity in passion finds a perfect expression in another medium which has its element in time, viz., music.

Evangelism aims to create a sense of passion as an instrumentality of loss of identity to a separate reality, abode of the divine. Intense emotional response and so called speaking in tongues is outward appearance of this. The speech of the evangelist is more music than word. One goes beyond listening for the meaning and listens for the “beyond” and in a sense goes there to the point of being in trance like state even at times, fainting.

a. Sensuousness is pneumaticized, i.e., freed from ordinate nature, by music because it hurries in a perpetual vanishing and has no reflexivity.

Pneuma, the vital spirit, the soul, or the spirit of God as holy ghost. Sensuousness comes to be filled with soul, i.e., soul is transfigured as sensuousness, the erotic in nature, and thus assumes characteristic of the daemonic. Evil is state of being insatiable, forever seeking fulfillment through sensual gratification.

b. We hear the "restlessness, tumult and infinity," not the sounds.

c. Eroticism thus becomes a power in itself.

d. It is inordinate, discarnate, spiritual, infinite, erotic longing.

It is a chaotic, disembodied spirit totally given over to infinite, erotic longing. This is the seusuous genius of Don Juanism.

e. Cf. E/O. p. 88 -- "The Middle Ages..."**

E/O is Soren Kierkeegard's "Either/Or, Vol. I"

f. Don Giovanni is "pure, discarnate erotic spirit..."

4. With neither the ordinacy of finite cosmos nor that of an unfailingly faithful will, the world is neither eternal (as a Cosmos) nor contingent (as a creature which might have not been) and becomes "contingent" in the sense that it is underivable, as a meaningless surd.

5. Pascal's Pensee's: Fragments* 72, 205, 427.

6. If psyche (Cosmos) is no longer the locus of numinal power; and, if pneuma no longer corresponds to the Yahwist speech, then psyche (Cosmos) becomes heimarmene, the insensate prison of an alien and restless power in quest of a 'hidden' divinity.

Heimarmene, divine providence or fate in the sense of God’s justice-dealing activity. I think Poteat meant something other than this here.

Now -- both the ancient Cosmos metaphor and the Yahwist metaphor gave alternative accounts of the background of order and meaning in the world; they both saw this background as “holy"; and in different ways commensurate with human existence. When both of these metaphors are fragmented -- we are left with an impersonal cosmos and a homeless voice whose questions evoke no (Yahwist) answers.

This fragmentation is, of course, what we are trying to understand.

Pascal advises the wise thing to do is just “contemplate in silence” the mystery of being. I agree that the default state is silence, peace. But absent any evidence to the contrary it is as likely as anything that God is a child with an ant farm and that there is no purpose outside that parameter. The cynicism of this view is astounding suggesting as it does that to see what we will do he invents trouble to throw at us, stirs us up with a stick for the pleasure of watching whether we overcome or succumb. This is as far as skepticism can take us, I suppose. I am personally more comfortable with less extreme approaches to achieving an understanding of being in the world. Coming out of that infinite silence of Pascal one can make a way to an infinity of destinies. The main problem with some views is they are just too simple and I think the purely skeptical, cynical view clearly falls into this category. One can mold life around the kernel that we live in an “impersonal cosmos” but it is wrong to do so. At the same time we can evolve unconsciously into a modality of living that means necessarily that ours is “a homeless voice whose questions evoke no (Yahwist) answers.” I think this is the obvious outcome of living a merely materialistic existence. One can consciously choose to believe that the universe is impersonal but those that follow the paths of Don Juanism, of the sensuous, the daemonic spirit that is materialism, make that choice unconsciously. It is made for them by their nihilistic solipsism. In the complete service of evil, as a majority of society seems to be, we all suffer from the combined madness and flounder in a tumultuous malaise of dread, fear, and anxiety from which there is “no exit.” I think there are good reasons to take different paths.

Plato, in the Timaeus, defines out of the divine, out of God, an aspect or facet he names the Demiurge. In Gnosticism this Demiurge is a divinity that is more builder of the material world than creator of the universe. He is the Archon, stands between man and God proper, and is capable only of endowing man with a sensuous soul whereas a rational aspect to the soul is an additive of the greater God. The Hebrew Jehovah God was identified as Archon by the Gnostics.

Speaking from personal experience, ritual activities of evangelical Christians involve dissipation of self identity in passion. A confused amalgam of feelings of not just joy, but guilt, anxiety, dread, fear, sorrow, and awe characterize the passages into these trances. I would point out that joy is not necessarily peace and also note Kierkegaard thought that dread was the opposite of faith. I wonder whether Christian faith, for many, is not also based on feeling? They try the impossible, to “know” with their body rather than their soul. They intend to “love” God, but is it not something less than God that they truly love? Is the trance itself a surrogate for the divine and thus is it not true that they in reality worship evil? God, thus, eludes them and their embrace sadly closes merely on the abyss. We are warned that there are serious pitfalls on the spiritual path, that evil is devious in the extreme and can appear as the greatest good, as the brightest truth. Tread carefully the path to God.

Look again at Don Giovanni, the sensuous genius as expressed in Mozart’s opera. This mode of worship of which we speak is not unlike Don Juanism, not unlike the tumultuous musical experience. Meaning is lost to feeling; feeling IS the whole of the Real, assumes a spirit of its own, a forever discarnate spirit, disappearing on its appearance, ephemeral and perpetually vanishing, seeking everywhere anihilation. It can’t be held and therefore is impossible to truly affirm. It is essentially empty, a meaningless, purposeless surd. Evil is that. Void of meaning and purpose is that longing for rapture, union with the divine in a “separate” realm, a heaven, to be carried away there to permanent bliss, joy, and release from the bonds of the flesh in order to join with eternal spirit. It is an impossible dream and those who truly find the essential truth of reality find that “the end of all our exploring/ will be to arrive where we started/ and know the place for the first time.”

So, for the simple person, is there a true path to the divine? Yes, and it is essentially characterized by humility. Fundamentalist Christians, and others too (secular humanists?), egotistically claim they have the secret to truth. This is not so, for, in a sense, the secret to the truth is bound up with doubt. One can never ever hold the truth, hold God, as his own for how can one hold what he always already has? “Salvation” is a process and I assure you the more you cling to certainty the more salvation will slip away.

* Blaise Pascal, (1623-1662)

Fragment 72

Man's disproportion. - [This is where our innate knowledge leads us. If it be not true, there is no truth in man; and if it be true, he finds therein great cause for humiliation, being compelled to abase himself in one way or another. And since he cannot exist without this knowledge, I wish that, before entering on deeper researches into nature, he would consider her both seriously and at leisure, that he would reflect upon himself also, and knowing what proportion there is ....] Let man then contemplate the whole of nature in her full and grand majesty, and turn his vision from the low objects which surround him. Let him gaze on that brilliant light, set like an eternal lamp to illumine the universe; let the earth appear to him a point in comparison with the vast circle described by the sun; and let him wonder at the fact that this vast circle is itself but a very fine point in comparison with that described by the stars in their revolution round the firmament. But if our view be arrested there, let our imagination pass beyond; it will sooner exhaust the power of conception than nature that of supplying material for conception. The whole visible world is only an imperceptible atom in the ample bosom of nature. No idea approaches it. We may enlarge our conceptions beyond all imaginable space; we only produce atoms in comparison with the reality of things. It is an infinite sphere, the centre of which is everywhere, the circumference nowhere. In short it is the greatest sensible mark of the almighty power of God, that imagination loses itself in that thought.

Returning to himself, let man consider what he is in comparison with all existence; let him regard himself as lost in this remote corner of nature; and from the little cell in which he finds himself lodged, I mean the universe, let him estimate at their true value the earth, kingdoms, cities, and himself. What is a man in the Infinite?

But to show him another prodigy equally astonishing, let him examine the most delicate things he knows. Let a mite be given him, with its minute body and parts incomparably more minute, limbs with their joints, veins in the limbs, blood in the veins, humours in the blood, drops in the humours, vapours in the drops. Dividing these last things again, let him exhaust his powers of conception, and let the last object at which he can arrive be now that of our discourse. Perhaps he will think that here is the smallest point in nature. I will let him see therein a new abyss. I will paint for him not only the visible universe, but all that he can conceive of nature's immensity in the womb of this abridged atom. Let him see therein an infinity of universes, each of which has its firmament, its planets, its earth, in the same proportion as in the visible world; in each earth animals, and in the last mites, in which he will find again all that the first had, finding still in these others the same thing without end and without cessation. Let him lose himself in wonders as amazing in their littleness as the others in their vastness. For who will not be astounded at the fact that our body, which a little ago was imperceptible, in the universe, itself imperceptible in the bosom of the whole, is now a colossus, a world, or rather a whole, in respect of the nothingness which we cannot reach? He who regards himself in this light will be afraid of himself, and observing himself sustained in the body given him by nature between those two abysses of the Infinite and Nothing, will tremble at the sight of these marvels; and I think that, as his curiosity changes into admiration, he will be more disposed to contemplate them in silence than to examine them with presumption.

For in fact what is man in nature? A Nothing in comparison with the Infinite, an All in comparison with the Nothing, a mean between nothing and everything. Since he is infinitely removed from comprehending the extremes, the end of things and their beginning are hopelessly hidden from him in an impenetrable secret; he is equally incapable of seeing the Nothing from which he was made, and the Infinite in which he is swallowed up.

What will he do then, but perceive the appearance of the middle of things, in an eternal despair of knowing either their beginning or their end. All things proceed from the Nothing, and are borne towards the Infinite. Who will follow these marvelous processes? The Author of these wonders understands them. None other can do so.

Through failure to contemplate these Infinites, men have rashly rushed into the examination of nature, as though they bore some proportion to her. It is strange that they have wished to understand the beginnings of things, and thence to arrive at the knowledge of the whole, with a presumption as infinite as their object. For surely this design cannot be formed without presumption or without a capacity infinite like nature.

If we are well-informed, we understand that, as nature has graven her image and that of her Author on all things, they almost all partake of her double infinity. Thus we see that all the sciences are infinite in the extent of their researches. For who doubts that geometry, for instance, has an infinite infinity of problems to solve? They are also infinite in the multitude and fineness of their premises; for it is clear that those which are put forward as ultimate are not self-supporting, but are based on others which, again having others for their support, do not permit of finality. But we represent some as ultimate for reason, in the same way as in regard to material objects we call that an indivisible point beyond which our senses can no longer perceive anything, although by its nature it is infinitely divisible.

Of these two Infinites of science, that of greatness is the most palpable, and hence a few persons have pretended to know all things. "I will speak of the whole," said Democritus. But the infinitely little is the least obvious. Philosophers have much oftener claimed to have reached it, and it is here they have all stumbled. This has given rise to such common titles as First Principles, Principles of Philosophy, and the like, as ostentatious in fact, though not in appearance, as that one which blinds us, De omni scibili. ³

We naturally believe ourselves far more capable of reaching the centre of things than of embracing their circumference. The visible extent of the world visibly exceeds us, but as we exceed little things, we think ourselves more capable of knowing them. And yet we need no less capacity for attaining the Nothing than the All. Infinite capacity is required for both, and it seems to me that whoever shall have understood the ultimate principles of being might also attain to the knowledge of the Infinite. The one depends on the other, and one leads to the other. These extremes meet and reunite by force of distance, and find each other in God, and in God alone.

Let us then take our compass; we are something, and we are not everything. The nature of our existence hides from us the knowledge of first beginnings which are born of the Nothing; and the littleness of our being conceals from us the sight of the Infinite. Our intellect holds the same position in the world of thought as our body occupies in the expanse of nature. Limited as we are in every way, this state which holds the mean between two extremes is present in all our impotence. Our senses perceive no extreme. Too much sound deafens us; too much light dazzles us; too great distance or proximity hinders our view. Too great length and too great brevity of discourse tend to obscurity; too much truth is paralyzing (I know some who cannot understand that to take four from nothing leaves nothing). First principles are too self-evident for us; too much pleasure disagrees with us. Too many concords are annoying in music; too many benefits irritate us; we wish to have the wherewithal to over-pay our debts. Beneficia eo usque laeta sunt dum videntur exsolvi posse; ubi multum antevenere, pro gratia odium redditur. ⁴ We feel neither extreme heat nor extreme cold. Excessive qualities are prejudicial to us and not perceptible by the senses; we do not feel but suffer them. Extreme youth and extreme age hinder the mind, as also too much and too little education. In short, extremes are for us as though they were not, and we are not within their notice. The escape us, or we them.

This is our true state; this is what makes us incapable of certain knowledge and of absolute ignorance. We sail within a vast sphere, ever drifting in uncertainty, driven from end to end. When we think to attach ourselves to any point and to fasten to it, it wavers and leaves us; and if we follow it, it eludes our grasp, slips past us, and vanishes for ever. Nothing stays for us. This is our natural condition, and yet most contrary to our inclination; we burn with desire to find solid ground and an ultimate sure foundation whereon to build a tower reaching to the Infinite. But our whole groundwork cracks, and the earth opens to abysses.

Let us therefore not look for certainty and stability. Our reason is always deceived by fickle shadows; nothing can fix the finite between the two Infinites, which both enclose and fly from it.

If this be well understood, I think that we shall remain at rest, each in the state wherein nature has placed him. As this sphere which has fallen to us as our lot is always distant from either extreme, what matters it that man should have a little more knowledge of the universe? If he has it, he but gets a little higher. Is he not always infinitely removed from the end, and is not the duration of our life equally removed from eternity, even if it lasts ten years longer?

In comparison with these Infinites all finites are equal and I see no reason for fixing our imagination on one more than on another. The only comparison which we make of ourselves to the finite is painful to us.

If man made himself the first object of study, he would see how incapable he is of going further. How can a part know the whole? But he may perhaps aspire to know at least the parts to which he bears some proportion. But the parts of the world are all so related and linked to one another, that I believe it impossible to know one without the other and without the whole.

Man, for instance, is related to all he knows. He needs a place wherein to abide, time through which to live, motion in order to live, elements to compose him, warmth and food to nourish him, air to breathe. He sees light; he feels bodies; in short, he is in a dependant alliance with everything. To know man, then, it is necessary to know how it happens that he needs air to live, and, to know the air, we must know how it is thus related to the life of man, etc. Flame cannot exist without air; therefore to understand the one, we must understand the other.

Since everything then is cause and effect, dependant and supporting, mediate and immediate, and all is held together by a natural though imperceptible chain, which binds together things most distant and most different, I hold it equally impossible to know the parts without knowing the whole, and to know the whole without knowing the parts in detail. [The eternity of things in itself or in God must also astonish our brief duration. The fixed and constant immobility of nature, in comparison with the continual change which goes on within us, must have the same effect.]

And what completes our incapability of knowing things, is the fact that they are simple, and that we are composed of two opposite natures, different in kind, soul and body. For it is impossible that our rational part should be other than spiritual; and if any one maintain that we are simply corporeal, this would far more exclude us from the knowledge of things, there being nothing so inconceivable as to say that matter knows itself. It is impossible to imagine how it should know itself.

So if we are simply material, we can know nothing at all; and if we are composed of mind and matter, we cannot know perfectly things which are simple, whether spiritual or corporeal. Hence it comes that almost all philosophers have confused ideas of things, and speak of material things in spiritual terms, and of spiritual things in material terms. For they say boldly that bodies have a tendency to fall, that they seek after their centre, that they fly from destruction, that they fear the void, that they have inclinations, sympathies, antipathies, all of which attributes pertain only to mind. And in speaking of minds, they consider them as in a place, and attribute to them movement from one place to another; and these are qualities which belong only to bodies. Instead of receiving the ideas of these things in their purity, we colour them with our own qualities, and stamp with our composite being all the simple things which we contemplate. Who would not think, seeing us compose all things of mind and body, but that this mixture would be quite intelligible to us? Yet it is the very thing we least understand. Man is to himself the most wonderful object in nature; for he cannot conceive what the body is, still less what the mind is, and least of all how a body should be united to a mind. This is the consummation of his difficulties, and yet it is his very being. Modus quo corporibus adhaerent spiritus comprehendi ab hominibus non potest, et hoc tamen homo est. ⁵ Finally, to complete the proof of our weakness, I shall conclude with these two considerations . . .

When I consider the short duration of my life, swallowed up in the eternity before and after, the little space which I fill, and even can see, engulfed in the infinite immensity of spaces of which I am ignorant, and which know me not, I am frightened, and am astonished at being here rather than there; for there is no reason why here rather than there, why now rather than then. Who has put me here? By whose order and direction have this place and time been alloted to me? Memoria hospitis unius diei praetereuntis. ⁷

Man does not know in what rank to place himself. He has plainly gone astray, and fallen from his true place without being able to find it again. He seeks it anxiously and unsuccessfully everywhere in impenetrable darkness.

** The Middle Ages had much to say about a mountain, not found on any map, which is called the mountain of Venus. There the sensuous has its home, there it has its own wild pleasure, for it is a kingdom, a state. In this kingdom language has no place, nor sober-minded thought, nor the toilsome business of reflection. There sound only the voice of elemental passion, the play of appetites, the wild shouts of intoxication; it exists solely for pleasure in eternal tumult. The first-born of this kingdom is Don Juan. That it is the kingdom of sin is not yet affirmed, for we confine ourselves to the moment at which this kingdom appears in aesthetic indifference. Not until reflection enters does it appear as the kingdom of sin….

[Footnote 3: "Concerning everything knowable" - the title under which Pico della Mirandola announced the 900 propositions which he undertook to defend in 1486.]

[Footnote 4: "Benefits are pleasant while it seems possible to requite them; when they become much greater, they produce hatred rather than gratitude.

[Footnote 5: "The manner in which spirits are united to bodies cannot be understood by men, yet such is man." - St. Augustine.]

[Footnote 7: "The remembrance of a guest that tarrieth but a day." - Wisdom, v. 14.]

In memory of William H. Poteat

2007-07-19T14:16:00.000-07:00

"Eroticism Music and Madness"

Course Sylabus

I. "Eroticism, Music and Madness"

As principle, as power, as self-contained system, sensuousness is first posited in Christianity; and in that sense it is true that Christianity brought [the] sensuous into the world.

1. Arche' as Cosmos, logos, psyche.

2. Arche' as davar.

3. The ordinacy of Cosmos arche' --

4. The different ordinacy of davar arche'

a. Logos is being, is reality, is divine. (Reality does "hide" itself, must be sought behind "appearances".)

b. The relation of "appearances" to logos. Being and nothingness relation.

c. Yet: Being is finite and fully knowable.

d. Davar is not reality, is not being, is not divine.

e. The paradigmatic act -- speech

1). Speech and speaker: former manifests latter, but not fully.

2). Act and actor: former manifests latter, but not exhaustively.

3). The person cannot be known exhaustively -- by another, by himself.

4). The Person is fully disclosed only to God.

5. What is the ordinacy of the Davar arche'?

a. Keeping promises -- God's model.

b. Is retaining one's identity

1). Cf. Israel vs. Yahweh: "I will be as I will be" -- "absolute relation to the absolute, relative relation to the relative."

2). Edward Chamberlain, Bendrix.

II. So -- whether you have the ordinacy of a finite Cosmos, or that of a providential divine will -- faithful Yahweh -- as alternative principles, you still do not have "restlessness and tumult, infinity."

A. How then does Xianity posit that spiritually (pneumatically) qualified sensuousness expressed in the musical Don Giovanni in Mozart's opera?

B. Xianity destroyed the finite, harmonious and fully intelligible cosmos of Grk. thought by substituting davar (the speaking and heard word) for logos (the word as written and read).

C. This made the relation between medium and its content more equivocal and contingent.

1. Reality does not hide behind appearances -- logos behind aesheta.

2. Reality is equivocally manifest as a person is always equivocally manifest in his speech.

3. Reality of man is contingently manifest inasmuch as he cannot fully indwell his own speech.

D. But the medium of speech becomes radically distinct from all cyclical and organismic forms of ordinacy; and becomes paradigmatic medium to reality.

E. Let us remember:

1. Language has its element in time.

2. It passes away in time in an essential sense.

a. Because of verbs with 3 tenses

b. Reflexive first personal pronouns -- thereby making a constant reference to the world as radically experienced by each of us in our bodies.

3. That inasmuch as speech has its element in time:

a. The sensuous element is negatived

b. Therefore: as a medium, speech frees us from ordinate nature, thereby giving us spirit --while restoring ordinacy at a higher level. (We "hear" the meaning not the "sounds")

F. Yet -- the very equivocalness and contingency of the relation between this medium and its content has two consequences:

1. Emphasizes the importance of fidelity to the spoken word -- the promise -- with Yahweh as model. Our words are forever in danger of becoming "musical".

2. Thereby suggests an antithesis to itself.

3. The loss of identity in passion finds a perfect expression in another medium which has its element in time, viz., music.

a. Sensuousness is pneumaticized, i.e., freed from ordinate nature, by music because it hurries in a perpetual vanishing and has no reflexivity.

b. We hear the "restlessness, tumult and infinity," not the sounds.

c. Eroticism thus becomes a power in itself.

d. It is inordinate, discarnate, spiritual, infinite, erotic longing.

e. Cf. E/O. p. 88 -- "The Middle Ages..."

f. Don Giovanni is "pure, discarnate erotic spirit..."

4. With neither the ordinacy of finite cosmos nor that of an unfailingly faithful will, the world is neither eternal (as a Cosmos) nor contingent (as a creature which might have not been) and becomes "contingent" in the sense that it is underivable, as a meaningless surd.

5. Pascal's Pensee's: Fragments 72, 205, 427.

6. If psyche (Cosmos) is no longer the locus of numinal power; and, if pneuma no longer corresponds to the Yahwist speech, then psyche (Cosmos) becomes heimarmene, the insensate prison of an alien and restless power in quest of a 'hidden' divinity.

Now -- both the ancient Cosmos metaphor and the Yahwist metaphor gave alternative accounts of the background of order and meaning in the world; they both saw this background as "holy"; and in different ways commensurate with human existence.

When both of these metaphors are fragmented -- we are left with an impersonal cosmos and a homeless voice whose questions evoke no (Yahwist) answers.

Note: F. 3. e. E/O is Soren Kierkeegard's "Either/Or"

Does a waterfall ever change?

2007-07-01T12:43:00.000-07:00

I am like Descartes when he asked "What am I?" except instead of using doubt to arrive at my core I use a process of discarding the constructs or determinate-man made, if you will-parts of my mind/body consciousness complex. Not surprisingly the point of arrival, after the method has been exhausted, is the same as Descartes. It seems, moreover, that any reductionism if faithfully carried out, would find that "man...is situated in existence by a combination of the temporal and the eternal," as Kierkegaard said. Descartes, of course, found that the doctrine of doubt reduced him to the infinite, as it were. He said the infinite is in me before the finite. I take it that his term "finite" would coincide with Kierkegaard's term "temporal" in the quote.

I ask what is given and finally find that only that by virtue of which there is asking is given, i.e., the world is the only given. Merleau-Ponty refined this into the notion that the world is the truth. It follows that it is a concomitant of sentient life that the truth therefore has an outlook on the truth. The self sees the self. Man is a device whereby the real can gain self awareness. This is a kind of tautology. But consider that the individual's point of view on the world is unique. New individuals constantly appear making discovery ever renewable. Each one is an existential mind/body instantiation of infinity for whom time and distance are uniquely relative. Then, we have something greater than a mere tautology. Each instant that the real is self identical it is nevertheless not the same real as before. Consider this as you ponder whether you can place your hand twice in the same river, or as you wonder whether a waterfall ever changes.

The scientific realist's description of the world will never be final and definitive. There can never be a "grand unifying theory" of reality. Of space/matter? I doubt that too. One's knowledge grows, yet the closer one approaches complete knowledge the greater the effort required to complete the final increments. And besides, knowledge is not the same as understanding and truth about the real itself in the end escapes precision. Material existence lends itself to measurement and science mistakes measurement for understanding, for truth. For attainment of true understanding that is fatal.

Shakespeare Sonnet 116

2007-05-28T14:27:00.000-07:00

On the occasion of my son's wedding.

I read a little while ago that in future computer data would be stored differently than now. All the technology now available only provides for temporary storage, more or less. Hard drives fail, DVDs, CDs, flash memory are all impermanent. In future the most permanent, enduring memory will be written in industrial diamond. When we reach the ability, in ten years or so, to store data at the rate of one bit per atom, say carbon-12 for zero and carbon-13 for one, we will be able to store in 25 grams of diamond memory matrix every event in the lives of all the citizens of Germany, for instance, for six years. Please see this.

But lovers have known this for millennia. Nothing new here. What is a memory if not forever, and what is forever if not diamonds? Thus their ubiquity in wedding rings.

But I digress. Forgive please.

This was a civil ceremony which somehow troubled me greatly. I suppose I had nothing to worry over and this appropriately filled that all important slot in my mental life for a brief interlude from more mundane matters. I wrote the following email to finally and fully vent the pressures in my tumultuous, tormented soul. Weddings are not easy. This is true on many levels. It is an intensely spiritual event and can, if done with extreme care and attention to every detail bring a beauty of supernal light into a gathering of family and friends, a beauty that will endure and serve as a touchstone for those who follow us down life's path. This wedding, the planning of which studiously sought, I perceived, to exclude any and all references to the sacred turned out to my everlasting delight and surprise to do just the opposite. Yes, it was intended to be merely secular, appealing only to the approbation of the state as the one true source of meaning for the ritual performed, but when Shakespeare took the stage all that went by the way.

The email:

Christopher and Amber,

At the wedding I didn't get to make a toast for whatever reason so indulge me here instead, please. I am not sure what my toast would have been, probably not quite what you see here. The toasts that were made brilliantly balanced levity and gravity and would have been impossible to top and difficult to equal, most especially Amber's dad. It seems early in my life it was all levity. Perhaps that explains why now it is all gravity. At any rate, here are some thoughts I would share.

Shakespeare's Sonnet 116

Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments. Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove.
O no, it is an ever-fixèd mark
That looks on tempests and is never shaken;
It is the star to every wand’ring bark,
Whose worth’s unknown, although his height be taken.
Love’s not Time’s fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
Within his bending sickle’s compass come;
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
But bears it out even to the edge of doom.
If this be error and upon me proved,
I never writ, nor no man ever loved.

Ellen Weaver's rendition of these words was by far the highlight of the wedding. Her voice in these immortal words brought eternal spirit into the very moment and transformed what would have otherwise been the merely secular into the sacred. So the two, Christopher and Amber, became one; a one centered everywhere, bounded nowhere. For that is the nature of soul, further evidence of which is the ability to "gaze steadfastly at stars which, though distant are yet present to the mind." Love is the faculty of bringing that star, "ever-fixèd mark", into the very heart of one, so from wherever the light shines, it shines from the heart. Love, "an ever-fixed mark...star to every wand'ring bark...not time's fool.." untouched by chaos, time's tumult, endures "...to the edge of doom." As such it is evidence of an abiding spirit beyond mere material reality.

With Christopher, captive audience, en route to Pilot Point I gave similar voice to these sentiments, but my source was different. Our friend Plato's thought was that love was a spirit too and that the creator, in need of a device, a vehicle, with which commerce could be carried between sentient life and himself, brought love into being. I pointed out to Chris that my own thoughts were that giving and receiving love, participation in love, actually grows love as spirit, as vehicle, and thus it lives, thrives. It shines like the sun and, like light, is attractive, drawing souls towards itself.

My benefactor said to me that doing good made doing good easier the next time a choice to do otherwise presented itself. I have come to see the wisdom of this and note herewith that you two, together, have done good and made it look so natural and with such eloquent and elegant ease that life for all that might happen to pass through your shadow will not be there eclipsed but attracted by your combined light will find their own light kindled and renewed. Love begets love. A simple mystery to discover, not a riddle to unravel.

Finally, understanding, for the secular mind, ever depends on being able to take measure, to find a dimension, a boundary condition. Note carefully that love, as discussed here, and this is likewise true of its cousins, truth, beauty, courage, meaning, justice and so forth, have no dimension, boundary condition. They are qualities of spirit and thus can't be measured. Understanding of these, therefore, is not based on measure, on dimension, and to have it is to acknowledge the unfathomably deep mystery of life. Discovery of that mystery is the very action of the unknown and understanding is never complete thereof but instead ever new. I ask, does a waterfall ever change?

Dad

Reaving

2007-05-22T20:04:00.000-07:00

I whip the steel cable into position and catch the rope off round it.
An upward pull applied, the coil sine waves up the pole
and is caught with a guy knocker.
Between my feet a galvanized anchor eye
holds chain hoist hook,
my hands hold the cable and straight grip in bond.
Hook the grip with second hoist chain
and jack the handle.

Look up at the sun beams
bouncing off the fog bank
shrouding the city.
Maelstrom of light-
poignancy so intense
atoms of perception,
separate, distinct entities
coalesce again into task at hand.

Road up the Mountain

2007-05-22T19:41:00.000-07:00

yellow flowers
dazzling thick
hear a voice of
blue sky
crying out to the sun,
green forest!

hearing louder than sound,
seeing brighter than light.

i go to the center of things
and writing your name there
i am lost from the other
like oblivion hides in infinity.

the sight of your eye
in sun's summer sigh
hides in noon's highest sky.
as wind blows grass to shimmering life
a bird wings blue spirit in empyrean flight.

May, 1972
The road up the mountain
Dawson's farm, Harpers Ferry

Spring

2007-04-21T12:51:00.000-07:00

The rite of spring
riot of blooms
rout of cold winds winters bane
shivering bones
clattering in dismal dungeons dark

Violets are gone now
and iris and lily
bluebonnets take the stage
peerless blue to shame a cloudless sky

Pretty pink primrose too
takes the eye and
pink petal's secret promise folds
virgin thighs' blissful path

See me touch me
feel me smell me-
please don't pick me
let me cast seed and wither and die

I'll be here every spring
past winter's baleful fling
and if you fail to come again
my bloom our last visit will still contain

Of all I am the flowering sum
Pinnacle of the past
nadir of the future
purpose centered everywhere bounded nowhere.

Reflection

2007-04-21T12:39:00.000-07:00

Reflection.

Meaning cannot be reduced to its expression.

The distillation of meaning, knowledge, truth, liberty, and the like, into formulae is ultimately impossible because these qualities, embedded in the real, are inexhaustible, ever renewing, ever in process of being increased. The mere attempt to express meaning GROWS meaning. Yet meaning, truth, liberty, etc., do not change in themselves. The fire of liberty remains fire, but grows brighter with action done in its service.

With the increasing illumination one imagines that attraction likewise increases and that correspondingly that "spirit whence issued forth of old..." this cosmic activity, smiles a little more at the unfolding of his intention.

Gathering of Eagles

2007-04-14T10:05:00.000-07:00

I have been involved with this organization. They have a Texas component as well as national.

The past few days, during discussions with my new GOE associates some thoughts have been percolating and it seems appropriate that I should put them down here.

This is an answer to Why GOE?

To most of the people I have been talking to lately this might seem a dumb question. Well, maybe not. All involved in the germination of this project have an understanding on some level in their own minds as to Why GOE? Some of these are complex, some simple, some from the intellect, some from the gut. Here, briefly stated, is my thought.

The American people want, whether they consciously know it or not, to be intimately connected with the "real" thing, by which I mean something greater than themselves as individuals. Duty, honor, truth, courage, crowned by liberty. Those are "real" things in the deepest most spiritual sense. Given proper leadership people will weld themselves to action that will rekindle these.

Everyone remembers the image of Pres. Bush, his arm around a grunged up firefighter standing on a pile of rubble at the WTC. All easily recall what he said that day and how a special kind of energy ran forth from that moment and instantly crossed the nation and informed a national purpose with a very special resolve. Where I live seemingly every vehicle and home instantly sprouted American flags.

An image like the one of which we speak, of course, awakens in our breast feelings that feed on these sentiments. People were first filled with dread, anger, fear, yes, even guilt and self loathing. But with one image, one simple phrase, these instantly gave way to courage, duty, honor and the like.

We literally swell up when duty calls and we can, following our conscience, find honor in a courageous act that further enshrines liberty in the hearts and minds of all who will follow her light.

A terrible resolve went forth that day and the world trembled at the thought of coming retribution. But, alas, this resolve has waned at the same pace as a diminishing national leadership. In this leadership vacuum opposing forces have taken the stage and pose an existential threat internally as grave as the external threat from Islamofascism.

It is the need to counter this internal threat that is the impetus for GOE. GOE is an answer to a need that is in the air for this kind of renewal.

Absent adequate leadership at the top we, the people, must provide it from the bottom. Our very existence as a nation depends on whether an enduring and terrible resolve to advance the cause of freedom can be rekindled.

The fire burns low precisely because, bombarded with negative images and associated negative tag lines, people become bewildered, lost, purposeless. People respond to images. It is in the fabric of our society. We are oriented to and from what we see. The failure of our leadership is in their inability to sustain the propagation of images and POSITIVE tag lines contrary to the daily drumbeat of the mainstream, liberal, defeatist, essentially soulless enemies of victory over tyranny. These are the blame America first crowd. All are apologists for those external threats of Islamofascism, Communism, and the like. They will fight for nothing. And, essentially are nothing in their nihilistic, atheistic solipsism. Their highest achievement in life is a kind of banal or vapid political correctness. This and their guilt and self loathing as seen in their perpetual anguish for minority rights becomes the apotheosis of their self invention as multiculturalists. What is lost is allegiance to something greater than the self. There is no "greater than the self". The self, for the moonbat, is centered everywhere, bounded nowhere.

This is the enemy within. He is a statist, a fascist, but thinks, knows, those who oppose him are these things. Until he is utterly vanquished it will be difficult to face external threats.

Brief Exchange

2007-02-11T15:17:00.000-08:00

Yesterday I read Aristides post Sociobiology and made a comment to which he made a reply:

John P. said...: .....

Wilson's thought is rigorous to a degree that most of us never achieve and I am humbled by the reach of his intellect. My personal reaction is that one needs to appreciate the limitations of knowledge which I view as restricted by its contingency on existential matter. Knowledge can never be complete, all encompassing. No body of knowledge is ever going to fully and finally give absolute expression to reality. Like material things knowledge is limited to a participatory role. It may be so that whatever absolute truth, or beauty, if you like, exists is coextensive with all being but at the same time each instantiation of that truth or beauty conveys no meaning beyond itself because of the ubiquitous nature of the substratum. Thus it takes a leap of faith or "belief" to dig out the "metaphysical" reality.

To me and others before me the emergence and the appreciation of values such as consciousness, truth, beauty, wisdom, conscience, justice, liberty, love, courage, nobility, and the like are essential clues to the true purpose of life. These do not have an existence of their own. St. Thomas Aquinas, if my memory serves, characterized such entities as contingent on the existence of another. In this instance that would be mankind. My own thought, borrowing from LeComte DeNouy, is that these things are actually imbedded in existential matter and given the right set of circumstances come into being. Taking these into consideration it is not to subtle a leap of the intellect that these evolutes, fragile as they might be, nurtured by religious and philosophical traditions and, yes, political ideology too, are, as the ancient Greeks (Socrates) pointed out, mechanisms by which man has commerce with a divine reality. Or, to put it another way, they are facets of the divine by which G_d's nature finds expression, and I might add, self awareness, through sentient beings. Life emerges from matter in order that the spark of consciousness will give rise to these divine qualities. I heard that the nuclear scientist is the atom's mechanism for attaining self knowledge. Well, the universe perhaps is G_d's way of seeing into his own nature.

Your insert regarding "...implications in the choice-migration to America.." provoked the thought that what is really at work in America is the evolution of the "Good" in a political mechanism that will tend to evolve and if it prevails impede the propagation of its antithesis, evil. Wilson, I suppose, might see this as mere tribalism. I don't.

In a nutshell the Universe is self aware, operates heuristically in the sense that discovery IS the action of the unknown. And as far as Nietzsche's void is concerned it is the great mystery of the real that out of nothing something does indeed come and passes back to its origin, the void. In a sense this accounts for the fact that knowledge can never be complete. How could you ever fill the void? Or, isn't the void filled with every experience and simultaneously emptied? So, instead of taking the view that, as Samuel Beckett wrote in his "Waiting for Godot", "They give birth astride graves, eh Didi?" one can alter the focus with a simple act of will. There is little reason not to rejoice in the fact that on the way to the void there is much to see and many wayfarers with whom to share the journey, such as Mr. Wilson.; 1:04 PM
Aristides said...: John P.,

First, I'd like to thank you for your thoughtful post. In many ways your views mirror my own.

Nietzsche always claimed that the proper symbol for reason is Uroburos, the snake that inevitably twists back to bite its own tail. I think this is beyond any doubt, a consequence of the Void as both condition precedent and condition subsequent of being in time. As you noted.

But this is not so for finite things. Microcosms are immanently accessible to reason precisely because Genesis is already presupposed. It is true that knowledge, even of a microcosm, can never be complete; but it is also true that relevant understanding does not depend on completeness. This is a basic tenet of information theory, and a basic truth of the world. To be complete, a theory of cell division would have to account for quantum electrodynamics in addition to cellular and chemical phenomena. However, to be efficacious--i.e. to be known or cosmically self-aware, as you put it--it does not. Information can be compressed by dropping redundancy, and yet the signal still gets through. Cosmic self-awareness and its attendant actualizations still occur.

Therefore, I am very confident in the prospect of ultimately understanding Man as Microcosm, even if we can never truly know Man's relation to the Void. A complete science of man is possible, though it is only recently back in favor. What's held us back is not the inadequacy of reason but rather an extremely daunting level of surface complexity which stems from the combinatorial capacity of the human mind and its manifest behaviors. Of course, Science needs to acknowledge its limitations, but it must do so without discarding its confidence. So long as its method emulates evolution--which is procedurally congruent to science--its confidence is justified.

But fundamentally you are right. Science can tell us that man, to avoid a cognitive phenomenon called despair (what Qutb called the "hideous schizophrenia"), must self-elect a submission to a particular metanarrative or purpose (i.e. get faith in the Kierkegaardian sense); and it can tell us that a society, once it's lost or exhausted a unity unto which it collectively submits (its soul in a Spenglerian sense), will eventually devolve and dissolve and factionalize around the quest for power.

What it can't tell us is a universally correct metanarrative, and the right unity. In fact, it warns against them because both history and evolution are complex non-abelian processes--neither predictable nor static.

White Doves

2006-08-15T19:05:00.000-07:00

Four white doves. Three had pink rings around their eyes. Black eyes. One dove had a black ring around his. White doves, black eyes, blue, peerless sky. Spotless birds, and pure white, the frost white of a rose. A frost white felicity to shame the moon. And the abyss, the dark, dark deepness of the black eyes, jewels encircled, set in pink and black, standing on dainty pink feet in a little white church with a glass door.

The young lady opened the door and gently took one dove. I immediately had the sense that this God's creature knew in some sense what was transpiring, its role in the unfolding of events this afternoon. There was only the flutter of the flags in the breeze to mark the time, a gentling backdrop to the sounds of grieving mothers, dads, sisters, brothers. The dove so gently held was paraded around the circle then a lady, Brian's mother, I think, handed off the just folded flag, and carressing the dove to her breast she let it go with a tear and a kiss.

The bird flew straight away and immediately it's three companions were set free. They quickly joined and flew, fluttering white sapphires in the peerless blue sky, circling the funeral rites below, and finding their bearing on the westering sun, they set off into the heavens, free spirits, liberated from the surly bonds of earth.

Rest in peace, Brian Kubik.

Laid to rest near Killeen, Texas.
August, 15, 2006
Died of wounds received in combat operations, Bagdad, Iraq.
He was 20 years old.
Patriot Guard Riders honored this American hero.

Take the gloves off

2006-07-25T17:55:00.000-07:00

Here is a comment I posted on Tigerhawk.

When the U.S. fought WW II there was no "proportionality". The Germans, the Japanese, the Italians are now our friends and allies to one degree or another. When we fought the "cold" war against the hegemony of the major communist states there was a measure of proportionality; yet, Russia and China, though not our friends in the same way as Germany, etc., are nonetheless involved with us in a more or less civilized way. As regarding the Korea and Vietnam wars, I would say they were more battles in the cold war than wars in themselves; and yes, we used proportionality in those conflicts. As a result we are still dealing with a major failure vis a vis North Korea. Vietnam, unlike states whose ass we properly kicked, is still pretty much an economic basket case whereas if we had used our full force then they would be much better off today; though I still claim we won that battle, just not decisively.

I think the problem with the current emerging world wide conflagration is that these people are so much different from us. We might as well be fighting aliens from another world. This is different from our previous conflicts in that these people are pre-medieval in their world view. We fail to understand what motivates them. We seem unable to accept that they don't want something "from us". They just want our destruction. One of their leaders said as much many years ago in a moment of candor.

We don't understand them. We are doomed to failure because we do not "know" our enemy. Lacking this knowledge we have a difficult time anticipating his next act of aggression. In fact, I am not so sure we even know ourselves anymore. This is a failure of leadership as much as anything. But I will tell you one thing. I believe our enemy is human enough to have his will broken and to do this the blood, as foretold in the Bible, will have to run in the streets to the depth of a horse's bridle. This can happen. Let them send a WMD into Tel Aviv or deal a major blow to America's heartland again.

The Greek historian Herodotus, writing about the Persian wars of 490 and 479 B.C., quotes the Persian king Xerxes:

"I intend to throw a bridge over the Hellespont, and to march an army through Europe against Greece, that I may punish the Athenians for the injuries they have done to the Persians....I...will not rest till I have taken and burnt Athens....if we shall subdue them, and their neighbors....we shall make the Persian territory co-extensive with the air of heaven; nor will the sun look down upon any land that borders on ours; but I...will make them all one territory, marching through the whole of Europe...no city or nation of the world will remain, which will be able to come to a battle with us... Thus, both those who are guilty, and those who are not guilty, must equally submit to the yoke of servitude."

Some of the rhetoric of the enemy is a mere echo of these sentiments.

Three hundred Spartans, at a mountain pass at Thermopylae, fought to the last man against Xerxes' army. In the valley below, the Greek army used this precious time to prepare to do battle against the invaders. The Greeks prevailed.

In a sense, Israel now fills the place of the Spartans giving the U.S. time to get its act together for the next chapter in this sad tale of which the current events are but a foretaste. God bless them for their service to a seemingly indifferent or even hostile human race. I for one, wish they would take the gloves off. Hell, I wish we would take the gloves off.